Description
Book SynopsisThis substantial essay depicts urban collapse in an exceptionally difficult period of the Serbian capital. The author has marshalled facts, reflections, photographs and other imagesto demonstrate the transformation of Belgrade during the Milošević years. With the theoretical grounding of cultural anthropology, history studies, culture of memory, history of art, and urbanism, Mileta Prodanović considers changes to the built environment and urban landscape in the city in the 1990s. He covers many visual aspects of life with great ingenuity: shopping centers, unregulated construction and “wild” modifications of buildings, new buildings (broadcasting studios, shops, homes) that do not fit the surroundings, bad taste in home furnishings (camp, kitsch), boondoggles such as the international art center, problematic historical markers like the obelisk of the eternal flame, billboards, store displays, electoral propaganda, graffiti, grave-markers and cemetery memorials, coins and paper money, calendars, beer labels, and even religious icons (and more). All this information is provided with some critique and much implied comparison to past standards.
Table of ContentsList of Figures, Maps and Plates
Foreword by Milena Dragićević Šešić
Author’s Summary
1. NEW FORMS OF SACRILEGE
The Icon: Between the World and God
Differentiating Icon from Idol
Profane Icons: A Socialist Innovation
The Icon in Serbia’s Post-Socialist “Popular Awakening”
2. PATHOPOLIS
Money as an Image of the State
Belgrade as a Patchwork City
Urban Downfall in the Shadow of War
The City as a Forum
“Targeting” in the Urban Environment
We Won (1): Medals as Reflections of an Incoherent Ideology
New Houses for New People
Celebrity Charlatans
Interlude: How the Past Travels
Požeška Street as a Manifesto of “Anti-bureaucratic” Architecture
The Way Something Is Written Is as Important as the Content. Maybe Even More.
Interlude: The Fine Art of Image Destruction (Iconoclasm Revisited)
Elections in the Urban Landscape
Megalomaniacs
We Won (2): The Eternity Which Lasted a Few Months
3. NECROPOLIS
Princes, Living and Dead
Rulers' Graves
Subjects' Graves
“Hush Thou, Night...”
ADDENDUM 1: Millennium Bug in the Graveyard
ADDENDUM 2: Millennium Bug in Republic Square
Biographies
Index
