Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia, 1945-91 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780472073146)

In the 1970s, Yugoslavia emerged as a dynamic environment for conceptual and performance art. At the same time, it pursued its own form of political economy of socialist self-management. Alienation Effects argues that a deep relationship existed between the democratization of the arts and industrial democracy, resulting in a culture difficult to classify. The book challenges the assumption that the art emerging in Eastern Europe before 1989 was either "official" or "dissident" art; and shows that the break up of Yugoslavia was not a result of "ancient hatreds" among its peoples but instead came from the distortion and defeat of the idea of self-management.

The case studies include mass performances organized during state holidays; proto-performance art, such as the 1954 production of Waiting for Godot in a former concentration camp in Belgrade; student demonstrations in 1968; and body art pieces by Gina Pane, Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic, and others. Alienation Effects sheds new light on the work of well-known artists and scholars, including early experimental poetry by Slavoj Zizek, as well as performance and conceptual artists that deserve wider, international attention.


Author: Branislav Jakovljevic
ISBN-10: 0472073141
ISBN-13: 9780472073146
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Language: English
Published: 06/13/2016
Pages: 382
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.30d