(De)Construction of Monuments

One of the most striking effects of the so-called post-communist transition, the one that is very often visible to the naked eye, is its impact on the urban space. We can regard these transformations as a sort of visual translation of many of the social and political phenomena of the post-communist condition. They make visible the ideological mutation a society has gone through after the fall of communism and reveal so the new hegemonies that have been established ever since. Moreover, they confront us with the impasses of our traditional understanding of urban space, of its social meanings and its normative dimensions. The implications of these changes are very often so drastic, that they put in question the fundamental values of modern society or even the very idea of society as such.

The research proposes to examine ways in which new, post-communist, post-conflict societies search their ways to re-define and express themselves in spatial ways. Seeking to understand how cultural memory is spatially erased and reinvented, I will examine the meaning of monuments throughout of history, especially concentrating on the countries of formal Yugoslavia and period of post-socialism.


Project name: (De)Construction of Monuments, Research


Location: Centre for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona, Spain


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