"The narrative got reduced to resemblance to UFOs"

September 10, 2024 7:31 AM

Concrete clickbait: next time you share a spomenik photo, think about what it means Photos of Yugoslav monuments known as spomeniks are often shared online, exoticised and wrenched from context. But now, argues Owen Hatherley, it is vital that we make the effort to understand what they truly represent.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs (16 comments total)

Mod note: Hi all, we got a single note saying "Symantec Endpoint Protection flags this link as a security risk". Please let us know if anyone else gets warnings about this link, sorry OP.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:58 AM on September 10 [4 favorites]

Atlas Obscura: The Misunderstood History of the Balkans' Surreal War Memorials

As viral images, the so-called "spomeniks" of the former Yugoslavia are often taken out of context.

posted by Rash at 8:15 AM on September 10 [2 favorites]

the emancipatory politics of struggle for a more equal society and anti-fascism that was embedded within them

I'm all for clarifying and nuancing the historical record, but currying favor with Tito does not strike me as part of a struggle for a more equal society, etc. I think it's enough to say that some of these sites memorialize conflicts and losses that we would consider worth memorializing and shouldn't just laugh at.
posted by praemunire at 8:20 AM on September 10 [4 favorites]

I have been lucky to see a few of these road tripping on motorcycle from Romaniain Serbia, Macadonia, and Croatia - they are very stark and brutalist, and like the article mentioned in the middle of nowhere at times. upon getting close and visiting them, there is very little commentary, even in the local language.

even after the research, it is non sequitur to see this Thai fighter type statue in the middle of a field down dirt road
posted by aggienfo at 8:48 AM on September 10 [4 favorites]

The spomeniks are beautiful. I think they are a lot more interesting than western monumemts and memorials. My favorite is Podgaric.
posted by pattern juggler at 8:48 AM on September 10 [3 favorites]

*tie fighter
posted by aggienfo at 8:48 AM on September 10 [4 favorites]

If you have access to the streaming service Mubi, they have a great Radu Jude short film streaming called The Potemkinists about this kind of abstract public monument, about the remembered vs. the real, the role the person telling the history has in the framing, and what people today can take from symbolically unclear statues. It is also, Jude being Jude, pretty funny.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:14 AM on September 10 [2 favorites]

> I'm all for clarifying and nuancing the historical record, but currying favor with Tito does not strike me as part of a struggle for a more equal society, etc

I see that you decided to just go with your prejudices instead of actually reading TFA.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:19 AM on September 10 [8 favorites]

Interesting article-- have shared with a public sculpture wonk that I know. Thanks.
posted by Capybara at 9:24 AM on September 10 [1 favorite]

Yeah, considering the point of the article that this wasn't about Tito but "FROM BELOW" and the individual republics were responsible, NOT Tito. But frankly, and not to go all Tito-ist. Really? He wasn't perfect, but he held the Federation together (and we SEE what happened after he was gone). He tried a line between the hardline soviet policies and the West Free Market. He wasn't perfect, but if you were gunning for a Communist leader who did about as good as could be expected with all the forces aligned against him, IDK. I mean unless you're just a free marketer wanting to whine about Communism in general, then do go on, I guess.

But really, the point is that we SHOULD NOT be placing these monuments as "just another totalitarian architecture/glorification aesthetic" that can be placed side by side with Nazi monuments cuz "totalitarianism" (as noted, this happened in a book).

These are not nationalist monuments to the "Glory of Yugoslavia" - they are commemorative. Will you shit on the Black Wall for Vietnam because the US was an imperialist power who sent their soldiers to kill people fighting for their own nation against a different imperial power? Or do you give it the respect it deserves because it's for the victims?

THAT is the point of the article. And that comment about Tito reflects exactly WHY the piece was written. Maybe you wanna read it next time? (I am often guilty of commenting without reading as well, so I get it, but maybe... this time it WOULD be good to read it).

I was surprised because it gave context that I didn't realize was there, except a vague sense of "memorials for victims" and not the power structures and activism that built them. This shows not only was it for the victims and not "Glory to Arstotzka", but it wasn't even directed from above. Tito was not responsible (and even if he was, I think it would be fitting to recognize what they are about). Or is it only when victims from countries who we "support ideologically" that we should defend, and negate the victims in our "enemies" countries?

Just spitballing here.
posted by symbioid at 11:18 AM on September 10 [8 favorites]

On Preview: Admittedly, even the Vietnam Wall was about the soldiers, and not civilians being killed in massacres. A better comparison would be if Vietnamese citizens made their own wall to commemorate the victims of My Lai (without support from the National Communist Party leadership), methinks.
posted by symbioid at 11:21 AM on September 10 [4 favorites]

Thanks for that link, pattern juggler. The history, design details, and contemporary context about how/whether the site is being maintained feel like exactly the kind of respect, attention, and connection TFA is asking for.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:29 AM on September 10 [2 favorites]

I thought I had read this before and yes this is a previously (if it matters to anyone). There's also the experimental film Last and First Men which raises some similar questions as this article (it uses images of the spomeniks).
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:59 AM on September 10 [3 favorites]

Relatedly, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (review by @anthro-poetry on Medium) on memorials and memorial monuments during the post-Soviet period:

such as the battle over Lenin's waxy remains and the 1989 tour of Prince Lazar's 600-year-old bones to all the parts of Yugoslavia claimed by the Serbs.


(Verdery also has books on what it was like to be surveilled by the Ceausescu regime while doing fieldwork, Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania’s Secret Police, and more recently My Life as Spy.)

Michael Herzfeld's work is probably also relevant.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:25 PM on September 10 [1 favorite]

I did, indeed, read the article. I am just not so innocent of power dynamics in an authoritarian society as to believe that that local authorities (or other powerful entities) following a program already established by the national dictator means that they were necessarily prompted by some sort of genuine, grassroots feeling to do so. I'm sorry, at least by itself, that is plainly inadequate as historical reasoning (*), and yelling at me because you didn't pick that up (as my comment was otherwise respectful of the memorials) is silly. Do you guys think that every statue put up in the Roman provinces by locals to the deified Augustus represented grassroots feeling? How about every statue of Stalin in the SSRs?

(*) Happy to believe there's a more complicated argument here that just didn't make it into the article, but it's not really there, so.
posted by praemunire at 5:33 PM on September 10

These aren't statues of Tito nor in honor of him.
posted by pattern juggler at 8:56 PM on September 10