The creation of Soviet culture in the 1920s and the 1930s was the most radical of modernist projects, both in aesthetic and in political terms. Modernism and the Making of the New Man explores the ...architecture of this period as the nexus between aesthetics and politics. The design of the material environment, according to the author, was the social effort that most clearly articulated the dynamic of the socialist project as a negotiation between utopia and reality, the will for progress and the will for tyranny. It was a comprehensive effort that brought together professional architects and statisticians, theatre directors, managers, housewives, pilots, construction workers. What they had in common was the enthusiasm for defining the "new man", the ideal citizen of the radiant future, and the settings in which he or she lives.
Zenitism and orientalism Glišić, Iva; Vujošević, Tijana
Zbornik radova Akademije umetnosti (Online),
2021, Volume:
2021, Issue:
9
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Reflecting on the centenary of the birth of Zenitism, this essay examines how the movement engaged with stereotypes about the Slavic Orient, and in particular the discourse on Balkanism. The European ...orientalist reading of the Balkans became especially profound in years surrounding the World War I. Seeking to invert derogatory characterisations of the Balkan Peninsula, Zenitists would embark on a mission to "Balkanise Europe" by presenting the artist from the East as a rejuvenating, revolutionary force emerging from a cultural tabula rasa. Zenitism sought to destabilise the dominant Orient-Occident discourse by establishing parallels between existing negative stereotypes of the Balkans and the aesthetic tropes of the European avantgarde. Specifically, Zenitists established the Balkan "Barbarogenius" as the archetypal modernist primitive - precisely the figure conjured by the European intelligentsia as the saviour for its listless modern condition. In addition, the Zenitist movement established an analogy between the hallmark fragmentation of the Balkans and the cultural cacophony of the avant-garde. The political and aesthetic strategies of the movement, the authors assert, bear a striking similarity with those of the Black Atlantic, and its 'in-betweenness'-its ambition to straddle two opposing worlds. Organised around its eponymous journal Zenit, which was conceptualised as "the first Balkan journal in Europe and the first European journal in the Balkans," Zenitism employed European avant-garde aesthetic strategies while simultaneously rejecting European claims to cultural supremacy. For Yugoslav, Soviet, and Western European audiences, the journal had two parallel goals: the creative "Balkanisation" of Europe, and a commitment to dismantling Yugoslav "nesting orientalisms" by fighting against the reproduction of negative stereotypes among the region's own inhabitants. Against a backdrop of European crisis and a global demand for a renewed emancipatory struggle, the ambition of Zenitism holds strong appeal today.
On animals and seas Vujosevic, Tijana
Cultural geographies,
01/2019, Volume:
26, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Socialist Yugoslavia, a small country in Southeast Europe, was unique in two ways. One was that it was not part of the Eastern Block and developed its own brand of socialism – ‘socialist ...self-governance’. The other was that it was a European country which, through the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement, associated itself with the recently decolonized countries of the so-called Third World and aspired to lead them. Interestingly, the worldliness of Yugoslavia and its uniqueness, respectively, were embodied in two menageries – the zoos of the Brioni archipelago in the Adriatic and Belje, a large hunting estate in the Pannonian Basin. Brioni, a veritable Yugoslav Noah’s Arc, was created by shipping animals from non-aligned countries as tokens of friendship and souvenirs of President Tito’s maritime expeditions to Asia and Africa. Belje was populated by what was understood as ‘autochthonous’ fauna and showcased Yugoslavia’s ecological and cultural uniqueness. This article examines how the two sites came to represent Yugoslavia’s global and local territory. It shows that the ways in which animals were collected, utilized and understood were closely connected to embodied political practices of the Cold War era. The menageries acquired a symbolic role, the article argues, because the relationships between animals and humans were deeply embedded in human political rituals and transactions of the age.
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The notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk as a modern political phenomenon – the merging of art and life and the artistic transformation of life in its totality – has been limited to public political ...spectacle and the theatrical enactments of state programs. In contrast, this article about the Soviet 1920s and 1930s looks at everyday life or, in Russian, byt, as the primary domain of modern aesthetico-political intervention. The successful ordering of everyday life according to the principles of communism would mean that even the most intimate aspects of citizens’ lives become part of a total work of art, which now encompasses not only the public but also the private sphere. The author traces the evolution of byt reform from the aesthetic associations between bureaucrats and artists of the 1920s to the 1930s mobilization of ordinary citizens as artists who mould their everyday environments in accordance with Stalinist politics.
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This essay looks at three portraits of women as homemakers on the Pacific Northeast following British Columbia's 1873 accession to the Dominion of Canada, when colonial relationships were buttressed ...by legal and administrative means, and ideas and practices of the home were central to the spread of Victorian moral norms on the Canadian ‘frontier’. Colonial spatial notions of interiority and exteriority, relationships to the site, and object-regimes were negotiated in this intimate microcosm.
The work of space-making that ‘frontier’ women presented in minor pictorial and literary genres was in itself a ‘minor architecture’ about finished form, or objecthood, and the perpetual negotiation of contradictory and unstable imperial spatial relationships which required reworking, reproducing, and redefining. These minor architectures' histories on the ‘frontier’ reveal architecture's power to weave hegemonic values into the very fabric of existence, as well as the fundamental interconnectedness of the identity of settler women and their labour.
In an age in which human presence on Earth has become precarious, architects have begun to contemplate their discipline on two parallel timelines: that of human history on the one hand and that of ...geologica or evolutionary history on the other. Anxieties about the potential disappearance of the human species call into question accepted notions of cultural heritage. The author focuses on the emergence of nonhuman intelligences in architectural discourse by looking at two examples of new materials and their aesthetic qualities—the idea of “self-assembly” in concrete science and an invention involving “guided growth.” She speculates on how including nonhuman agents in a discussion of architecture changes the way we conceive of cultural and civilizational continuity.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The study was carried out in collaboration with the coordinator of an undergraduate architecture course at a Western Australian university. The course had recently been re-designed to increase ...participation of students in on-campus lectures and improve the depth of engagement of students in the learning program. The major focus of the redesign was the incorporation of a Facebook group to encourage active engagement of students.
The study aimed to examine the response of students to this re-design, with a view to identifying elements of their learning experience that could be the focus of improvement in future iterations of the learning design. Elements of the student learning experience explored were access to information and resources, support and motivation, participation and collaboration, assessment and feedback as well reflection and knowledge construction. In addition to examining student responses to the redesign, the study aimed to identify aspects of their Facebook experience that may influence their perception about their overall course experience. Multiple regression analyses showed that students in this study were likely to report satisfaction with elements of their experience when any concerns about posting on Facebook were well managed, a sense of community was experienced by students through Facebook and they felt encouraged to learn through their Facebook engagement.
•Facebook group integrated in unit course design.•Student concerns of what is posted on Facebook contributes to the satisfaction of their learning experience.•Conversational tone on Facebook group does not significantly affect student learning experience overall.•Sense of community is a critical factor in designing Facebook group learning.•Peer learning on Facebook results in a positive influence on Feedback.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Around 1930, during the era of the First Five-Year Plan, the Russian urban bathhouse, or 'banya', was collectivized and placed under state care. How did changes in the architecture of the model ...'banyas' of Moscow and Leningrad articulate the changing role of the 'banya' as a site of pleasure, cure, and socialization? How do the aesthetics, ethics, and choreography of bathing in this period illustrate the relationship between the state and the urban proletariat as mediated by modern technology? How did they reflect the vision of the Communist society as a mechanized universe?
Homage to the Sad Space Bitch Vujosevic, Tijana
Thresholds (Cambridge, Mass.),
01/2020, Volume:
48, Issue:
48
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Saint Dog. Staring at us, her canine countenance framed by a white halo. The halo framed by a trapezoid. A window. On the surface of a striped planet. No, a striped ship. A striped spaceship. Or a ...planet, a globe on a pedestal decorated with a Saturn-like object and a comet. Some stars. A planet in space, no, a planet on space. A pedestal for an angel dog, the guardian of astral objects, guardian of the planet. Guardian of children's hopes and monies that will be deposited, through a slit, into what appears to be called the "Sputnik Bank." The "Sputnik Bank," one learns, was, despite its English name, made in Japan. This is ultimately not important because Laika was the property of humanity, looking at us not only from this little planet of hers, in which she is captured and saved for posterity, but from all across this globe of ours. The omnipresent protagonist of a glorious phantasmagoria Man has made--capitalized Space. Saint Dog. Holy Dog.
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In 2005-06 an exhibition in New York focusing on Russian art featured the installation work 'The man who flew into space from his apartment' (1981-88; illus.) by Ilya Kabakov. The work can be seen as ...a commentary on individual aspiration in the age of space travel, and by imagining the work as one piece in an exhibition of works from Soviet Russia all examining the concept of utopia in some way Kabakov's work can be seen as conveying the idea that the utopian is a repeating but unrealizable and unrepresentable historical theme.
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