Some Thoughts on Artistic Re-Imaginings of Yugofuturism’s Utopological Elements

Abstract

Within the context of societies marked by the postsocialist transition of the 1990s and their cultural – and to a certain extent, their political – practices, we need to highlight the insistence on a meaningful connection between this future and certain past socialist socio-political aspirations as one the more recognizable aspects of thinking about the future. Depending on position or perspective, these aspirations towards equality, interpersonal and intergenerational solidarity, a fairer distribution of resources, and creativity as the basic direction of human life experience may today seem utopian, naïve, or even unnecessary. In this paper, however, I consider whether it is not precisely this legacy of the above-characterised utopianism – not as a teleological orientation towards a predetermined future but rather as a form of action and an attempt to act for the future in the now – that is one of the more meaningful and not at all naïve aspects of the approaches adopted by artistic and cultural practices which we may refer to as yugofuturistic. I will do so by focusing specifically on attitudes towards remembering, and former utopias and related practical issues examined in the works of Marta Popivoda and Ana Vujanović.