Review: A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, by Marko Ilić

Abstract

Book Review| December 01 2021 Review: A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, by Marko Ilić A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia by Marko Ilić. MIT Press, 2021. 384 pp./$39.95 (hb). Joscelyn Jurich Joscelyn Jurich Joscelyn Jurich is a writer and PhD candidate in communications at Columbia University, where her research focuses on cultural production in conflict and post-conflict contexts, including the former Yugoslavia. Her writing and research on photography and film has appeared in Afterimage, Journal of Visual Culture, Studies in Documentary Film, and Performing Human Rights: Contested Amnesia and Aesthetic Practices in the Global South, edited by Liliana Gómez (2021). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2021) 48 (4): 75–81. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2021.48.4.75 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Joscelyn Jurich; Review: A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, by Marko Ilić. Afterimage 1 December 2021; 48 (4): 75–81. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2021.48.4.75 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAfterimage Search A still from Marina Abramović’s performance piece Rhythm 5 (1973–74) is the compelling and apposite cover image of art historian Marko Ilić’s A Slow Burning Fire: The Rise of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, a social history of the New Art Practice and related arts collectives that emerged from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s in the capitals of the federation. In the piece, described by Abramović as “the ritualization of the communist five-point star,” and first performed at the Students’ Cultural Center (Studentski Kulturni Centar, or SKC) in Belgrade in 1974, a large five-pointed star made out of wood and wood chips and soaked in petrol becomes a sacrificial frame.1 Abramović sets fire to the star, transforming the wood into a red-orange blaze that creates an illuminated version of the red star that adorned the center of the Yugoslav flag, added by the Partisans after World War... You do not currently have access to this content.