BREAK Journal of The School For History and Theory of Images

Conversation
BREAK
BREAK Journal of the School for History and Theory of Images
vol. 2, no. 2-3, January-June 2002
Publisher:
Centre for Contemporary Arts - Belgrade
The School for History and Theory of Images
Sarajevska 3/VI, 11000 Belgrade, YU
phone/fax: (+ 381) 11 361 35 84
e-mail: cca@dijafragma.com
www.dijafragma.com
Editors:
Andrej Dolinka, Du{an Grlja, Slobodan Karamani}, Dragana Kitanovi}, Vesna Madòski,
Vladimir Markovi}, Svebor Midì}, Sini{a Mitrovi} (Editor-in-Chief), Milan Rakita, Jelena Vesi}
International Advisory Committee:

Glenn Bowman (Canterbury), Boris Buden (Wien), Elisabeth Cowie (Canterbury), Tom Holert (Köln),
Neboj{a Jovanovi} (Sarajevo), Alexei Monroe (London), Bojana Peji} (Berlin), Renata Salecl (Ljubljana),
Mark Terkessidis (Köln), Slavoj @ièk (Ljubljana)
Proofreaders:
Dragana Kitanovi}, Vladimir Markovi}
English translations:
Vanja Savi}, Barbara Vasi}
Cover:
Phil Collins, Young Serbs, 2001 (© 2001 phil collins)
Design & lay-out:

Andrej Dolinka
Typeset:
preLOM
Printing:
Akademija, Beograd, 2002
Poster:
Phil Collins, becoming more like us, 2002 (© 2002 phil collins)
Phil Collins, Dejan (leaving), 2002 (© 2002 phil collins)
Printing:
Forma, Beograd, 2002
Editorial Office:
Sarajevska 3/VI, 11000 Belgrade, YU
Phone/fax: (+ 381) 11 361 35 84
E-mail: prelom@dijafragma.com
www.dijafragma.com/school
© 2002 Copyright by Prelom

CONTENTS:
[7] Conversation, The polemic on Phil Collins’ Young Serbs
[ 11 ] Branislav Dimitrijevi} Suspended Adolescence
[ 15 ] Aleksandra Sekuli} Defense from the Protection (Re: Suspended Adolescence)
[ 24 ] Slobodan Karamani} Post-traumatic Youth and the Conservation

by Way of Individual Experience
[ 34 ] Du{an Grlja (De)generation in Protest
[ 45 ] Milan Rakita Conversation Piece
[ 52 ] Vesna Jovanovi} The Sixth Head

CONVERSATION
the polemic on Phil Collins’ Young Serbs
Phil Collins (not THE pop-star!) is an artist based in Belfast. This year he’s on the inter-
national progam at the PS1 Contemporary Art Museum, New York and makes work in, and
about, representation in places conventionally called hot spots.
Phil Collins’ photographic series entitled Young Serbs was shot during the summer last
year in Belgrade. In October 2001 two of the photographs were shown in The Museum for
Contemporary Art, Belgrade in an exhibition called Conversation. This exhibition re-opened
the Museum and marked the change in the institutional policy and curatorial conception
which characterized this cultural institution during the nineties. Its title itself implied, in
many accompanying meanings, one of its fundamental aims: to provide a possibility for »an
informal interchange of thoughts, and to signal the ability to open that interchange within
an isolationist environment«.
In the following months, Phil’s work produced exactly such an interchange. Led in the
beginning as a kind of informal polemic, through an intensive e-mail correspodence, and
even more intensive discussions over the phone, at numerous house-parties, ‘on the town’,
and in Break journal editorial meetings. It gave us a proof that the aspirations we advocated
in the editorial of our first issue (to »spark off continuous and open debate in culture and art,
boost all forms of alternative and uninstitutionalized thinking, develop and update mecha-
Conversation|BREAK|8
nisms of constitution and communicational standards of an intelectual community«) were

not merely an illusion. Therefore we are proudly presenting it in this issue.
The word conversation repeated here as a title for the section in this case means actu-
al support to every genuine dialogue which encourages polemical and critical reflection.
Instead of adding A WRITTEN comment, the artist is giving us a gift - a limited edition
pull-out poster produced especially for this occasion. It contains two photographs from his
latest series becoming more like us (shot in Belgrade as well) shown for the first time in
January 2002 in a solo show in Dublin.
Are we facing an another polemical turn?
Branislav Dimitrijevi}
SUSPENDED ADOLESCENCE:
THREE »BELGRADE PHOTOS«
BY PHIL COLLINS
»...anyway — here they are — romantic, sexy,

deathly, intimate, posed, bucolic, disappointed, suspicious. When I was taking stuff, or even
when I felt I couldn’t take stuff, I wanted to escape the urban grit and aggressive posturing
of western photography in Belgrade and try and pick at a romantic sensibility - hinting
somewhere near a commercial/shampoo ad. Please let me know what you think even if you
can’t bear them...« (Phil Collins in an e-mail with three attached images, all close-up photo-
graphs of 20-something year old people, two male, one female, lying down in the grass.)
Well, yes, I can hardly bear them. They appear too intense, too close, too physical. But
what I think I cannot really bear is the gaze from their eyes. The eyes of people lying down,
resting their heads; a gaze you encounter only in the most intimate situations.
On the other hand, for a trained art historian, the myth of Narcissus immediately
comes to mind. One can almost smell the pool just a few metres away. Unfortunately, since
I know where these photographs were taken, the magic might go for me. But does not.
The photos were taken in a rather busy Belgrade park, no pools nearby, only uncut
grass and poorly maintained trees and bushes. In the city famous for... - whatever it is
famous for - the sentiments of intimacy and sensuality escape even us who live there. These
are the remotest notions possible in a context where private life has been utterly influenced
and directed by political events. Have I said anything new or just confirmed the dictum that
everything private is political? Either way, the rediscovery of an image of intimacy in
Belgrade struck me a year ago, when I saw a video by an artist from Ireland, Phil Collins, that
was shown in Ljubljana at Manifesta3. The video was a low-tech recording of tales told
directly to camera by three young Belgraders (in fact the very same three that are now in
these photographs). They reply to different questions that put in motion relations between
their most intimate living and the world that surrounds them. They sound disappointed but
accustomed to it, there is a touch of melancholy but, confronted with the stubbornness of the
camera, the overall impression is very poignant without being tragic. I have to admit that I
was unexpectedly captured by these photos. The whole story of what happened in the place
I live in, and in places all around me, became poeticized for the first time. In other words: I
took it quite personally.
There is no sense of detachment now that I see the ‘sequel’ to the film in the form of
a short photo-play consisting of these images. Now the ‘story’ has finally gone: there are not
even the subtlest references to war, isolation, poverty, guilt... There is nothing that defines
the images as they were in the video, there is nothing that yells out: This is Serbia, this is the
place where Slobodan Milosevic was in power for more than 13 years, this is the country
where at the beginning of the 90s the majority of inhabitants authorised military interven-
tion against neighbouring nations, this is the place where there are still many people who
do not have any sense of shame (well, yes, shame and guilt are two different things, as Joyce
once put it) for atrocities done in their name, this is the place where the average salary is
under £50, where the remains of industry were destroyed by NATO air-strikes, and where
13|Conversation|BREAK
reports say, that the accomplishment of a sexual life among the young (and the rest) has
acquired a most uninspiring shade of grey.
These real-life Belgraders in the photographs are in their 20s. Yet they disclose a kind
of sexuality that is almost adolescent. There is a ‘retro’ mood about them, they look stuck in
their youth, and aware of it. This most striking aspect of these photographs hits an interest-
ing spot in the peculiar social sphere that can be observed in contemporary Serbia. Collins
openly expresses his intention ‘to escape the urban grit and aggressive posturing of western
photography in Belgrade’. That is indeed the case. Usually, visitors to Serbia who make it
their mission to take images of a hot spot, aim their camera at two common sights. The first
is to look at ruins. Ruins as a sign of social collapse, for those who want to show that the sanc-
tions against Serbia really worked; ruins as a sign of an unjust bombing for those on the Left
who want to show that western countries heavily participated but did not solve the conflict
in the region; and ruins as a sign of ‘Art’ for those who attempt to achieve a sense of subli-
mation, by taking these images and making them look ‘artistic’. The other sight is the ‘urban
culture’ of Belgrade. This was invented by admirers of Serbian opposition movements, of the
activities of the Radio B92 and by all those who believed that there is such a thing as ‘the
other Serbia’ visually manifest in rock ‘n’ roll bands playing in smoky garages or ‘western-
looking’ kids in gritty urban landscapes. Collins took a look at something else, something just
half-discovered: at faces not surrounded by explicit cultural and social settings, at sexuality
without aggressiveness, and, at some firm disappointments affecting all of us here... He cap-
tured a fascinating feature that defines the psychic structure of that urban culture that has
been portrayed so many times as something that is ‘good in itself’ because it’s shown an
alternative to the dominating political framework of Milosevic’s Serbia. Collins captured
something I might try to define as suspended adolescence in the country where youth is
extended up to the point when people suddenly get old.
There are mostly economic and social reasons behind it, of course: unemployment, no
committed relationships, conservatism at universities, and so on. However, there is also
something eternally narcissistic about this position. It is cherished, it is a part of a self-con-
struction; of sexuality, of rejection of maturity. The pictures reveal narcissism as the core of
their sexuality, they are ‘sexy and deathly’, reposing as lovers and corpses. There is no pool
where their images are reflected, but the camera plays that role. ‘It seems very evident that
another person’s narcissism has a great attraction for those who have renounced part of
their own narcissism and are in search of object-love’, wrote Freud in On Narcissism. As
observers we share this position with the person who took the photos. Our position is impos-
sible, we are either looking out of the pool (as the corpse in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard)
or share the same grass with someone who is there but looking through us. We can hardly
bear these images because the gaze we encounter is directed towards us but not reaching us.
We are faced with a sexuality that is entirely self-absorbed, echoing the lines from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses describing Narcissus’ self-deception:
Himself admiring, by himself admired.

Lover and loved, desiring and desired.
This text is printed in Source – The Irish Photographic Magazine, no. 28, Autumn 2001
Aleksandra Sekuli}
THE DEFENSE FROM

THE PROTECTION
(RE: SUSPENDED ADOLESCENCE)
I was lying
and in my sleep I saw
heads cut off.
Those were all
the heads of my
enemies.
(Milo{ Bodnar: »Heads cut off«, 1998.)
Because one of those faces is mine, I partly take Branislav Dimitrijevi}’s text
»Suspended Adolescence«, which accompanied Phil Collins portraits »Young Serbs« in Source
magazine, as a letter addressed to me. Partly means I will take personally only the possible
consequences of the »protection« from the discourse of »Other Serbia« offered by the author,
relying on the other hand on another stereotype, equally unacceptable for me. Recognizing
Dimitrijevi}’s successful veer away from the usual urban grit, the author applauds Collins for
revealing something he calls suspended adolesescence. In opposition to an old stereotype he
presents a model of posttraumatic youth which he defines as a generation which is, because
of social and other reasons, stuck in its youth until it suddenly wakes up old. Automatically,
as models usually work, emotions and behaviour expected of posttraumatic youth are attrib-
uted to me. Being already promoted in Other Serbia once, I remember very clearly how sticky
the obligation to confirm or to reject some given context could be; or one just falls into the
expected form of behaviour, feelings, and symptoms. The irresistible urge to defend myself
from this protection is also because I found this text very important, since it is:
1. written with suggestive prowess;
2. anticipating a clash with the discourse of the Other Serbia;
3. relying on the terms such as generation (which offends my taste).
On top of that it generalises dangerously (which offends my hypertrophied pride) the
experiences of the people I know, whose richness/lack of experience naturally assures the
originality of its classification and attempts to transpose it into individual cases. This may be
their only hope of having something still under their control. My hope is not going to be sac-
rificed in the name of coherence for some system of interpretation. In this case, the model is
the easier way, and when it is applied with such grace and charm, it is dangerously seduc-
tive. I enjoyed it myself, the protection is cosy, but I remembered that it’s me we are talking
about and that actually it doesn’t agree. So, I am going to speak for myself, since one of my
goals is to prove that you can’t make a clinical diagnosis of something that doesn’t exist. Our
generation doesn’t exist (axiom: generation = a generation’s shared memory.)
AND ME, TOO, ALMOST

(For Low-fi we die, cause Low-Fi can’t lie)
Diving through the precious archive of the Low-Fi Video movement, I myself was tempted to
generalise the experience of the authors. Works which are very specific and original respons-
es to certain situations. Considering aspects of sociological, psychological, even literary rules
they should be: posttraumatic refusal of the body, postraumatic substitution of the body,
posttraumatic. . . this and that. Fortunately, I study these works from people who didn’t
expect any mass-compassion or world fame. So the same process of production and screen-
ing was protected by a sheltered atmosphere, therefore I was unafraid of possible pragmat-
ic exhibitionism and construction of illness. But I constantly feel the resistance of particular
works to any classification; they look me straight in the eyes with dignity, with the strength
of a true life, which is not similar or one of. So, it is best to leave them their dignity of the orig-
inal, and observe them as particulars.
THE BEST WAY TO WRITE ABOUT US IS BY USING BODNAR©S POETRY.
Henry Fielding, in eighteenth century, found his language corrupted and began its purifica-
tion by irony. By filling the empty pots of words with meaning using dramatic exemplifica-
tion. He could pull this off. We found a situation of totally banalized verbal articulation of the
experience but, driven into an escapism (metatextual, and Bodnar, Tijana,
Dejan and I South Banat metaphysical1), we got an ability to communicate 1inSouth of Banat is an area
Vojvodina, famous for its
under the language. To use it as an attitude. Bodnar choose to borrow the metaphysical atmosphere
Literature (and Literature happened a long time ago), but to show what we have learned: to
read under the language, in spite of the bad translations. Which is so hard that we almost
accept the limping form of the bad translations as a simple prothesis, to show the invalidity
beside our healthy legs. The true lack is real, but it is harder to show it. We faked our limping
to make a link to our true invalidity. What Bodnar did is formalize the language’s imperfec-
tion. Deliberately giving up the language, which doesn’t deserve any more to be the means
for the expression of our enormous experience, turned into the paroxysm by its historical
burgeon, like Nerval’s extension until the disappearing. Therefore, we are deprived of the
‘generation’ experience, because we have so much of it, and in its richness it is broken into
individual selections.
Whether it is horrible night,

or the day, tired and pale,
I barely breathe, struggling, clenching,
but though I am living,
I am alive.
(Milo{ Bodnar, antic writing, 1997)
In one of our Boba’s texts two images are introduced as the key images in forming our
generation’s conscience: the image of the death of Josip Broz Tito and the image of the Nato
bombing of Yugoslavia. Their significance is undoubtful, but I can’t speak for the generation.
I ‘ll speak for myself.
In the eighties, when we were having state holiday performances, we sang many
songs about Tito, and one of the most remarkable was the one with the refrain »If there is
eternity, Tito is its name«. It always opened some strange visions in my head, like we shall
be in the »Star Trek« future, but we will still remember our Tito, because it has been almost
three, four, five years since he died, and we still remember him. Eternity is remembrance for-
ever, and it is connected with death.
Two hours before the first NATO air strike on Yugoslavia, in »Zora« café in Belgrade,
we gathered to celebrate the new album of the band Jarboli. Some camera spontaneously
appeared and we recorded our ritual beer drinking and cheerful confusion, farewell to
friends who were leaving town with their bags. Daniel’s sung exotic Iron Maiden hit »Seven
deadly sins«, the song of little Angela (eight years old): »So, Serbs, drink, smoke cigars and kill
each other...«. There was a song on that album which was made a few years before, it was
called »The day before the end of the world«, and Jarboli and Low-Fi Video edited a video for
it in the first days of the war, using the recordings from that evening. One rainy afternoon
during the bombing, Daniel, Boris and I were going to friends to show them Low-Fi Video
works (Jarboli were dressed like illegal partisan resistance from the movies and I looked like
their girlfriend who is spying as a Gestapo secretary. We laughed when we saw our illegal
reflection in the shop windows, it was a sort of Bachtinalian carnival therapy). Yet when we
saw it again, the video was somehow touching but untrue. The lyrics are »Nothing else can’t
disturb, I’ll die peacefully the day before the end of the world...«. We had died in advance in
a way, in that farewell of ours, but it was just a reconciliation with the possible. . . When you
die, you die to someone, so dying peacefully is selfish.
These two beautiful but untrue songs illustrate my starting point in explaining the
heterogeneousity of the reactions and original expression of those reactions. They problema-
tize the common diagnosis and the clinically doubtless announcement of the behaviour
expected of posttraumatic youth in Serbia. Threatening the context of »general« and
»Generation« is an equally dangerous generalization which could make the biggest achieve-
ment of my carefully maintained group of friends worthless, efforts of the people who trans-
pose their experience differently but together, in unrepeatable and original lives, with sin-
cerity and honesty, not following the clichés or constructing them. Posttraumatic youth is
nothing new under the sun, and we could fall into the model of the interpretation which
would be applied to explain everything related to us as the consequences of the social and
other reasons. The biggest mistake is in overlooking the fact that our trauma wasn’t just one
whole event, it was a continuous, rich, decade long series of traumas. The selection of the
most important impressions is completely individual, because stating a minimum of com-
mon experience is almost impossible in such diversity. The expected self-sufficiency and nar-
cissistic behaviour is the rarest reaction among the people I know, which doesn’t mean that
it doesn’t exist, but it can’t be announced for a model of, alas, generation. On the contrary, we
didn’t have time to stick to something like that, we spread ourselves in each other to inde-
structibility. That was the point of those two songs, we distributed ourselves and remem-
bered each other for eternity, the strong emotional relationships and the need for sharing is
much more often the case.
THE LAKE, THE SUN
The part in Dimitrijevi}’s text regarding Narcissus and the impossibility of the spectator’s sit-
uation is beautifully written. The vision of the spectator as a corpse floating in Narcissus’s
lake is terribly inspiring, because, looking into the camera in spite of the sun, I felt myself
how it was possible for Camus hero to kill only because the sun was in his eyes. Maybe I did
kill some spectator. And he fell into the lake. On which I am reflected.
»Great, great, please, I know it’s hard for your eyes, just one more, don’t smile...«-
how can I not smile, when this reminds me of that series about secret agents
working undercover as models and fashion photographers (»I need a hero..« was
the song, my favourite in the summer holidays in 1983. or 84...) — »yeah, that’s
fantastic, great« — Phil was satisfied, and after the photo session, we went for a
coffee on the Kalemegdan fortress terace. There was some fashion show rehears-
al going on, and we were watching some twiggy models and their musculine
Rollex boyfriends (The First Serbia?) sitting across us, in a strange situation of a
grotesque Kraft solidarity.
This reading of our absent look as paralysing and unbearable is a projection of the
panic among the generation of the author, their fear of the unknown consequences of the
trauma that my unrecoverably damaged generation had survived so young and therefore
become somehow mysteriously different. From my point of view, the fact that we survived
those things young is comforting as proof that we got ready to fear for future young people
in the face of horrible new traumas they are going to struggle with. Maybe it was easier for
us to endure such a gradient of trauma during our youth than it was for the middle-aged
people to whom it looked, no matter how long it lasted, as a sudden disaster, abnormal and
unbearable. The dull misfortune, a leftover, no longer as sharp as a bomb or police interven-
tion, is now taking our parents quietly - by heart attacks. I can’t seem to forget the prophet-
ic warning of a neuropsychiatrist who said that the real consequences of the bombing will
appear in a few years. When people start to complain of the unexplainable fears, neurosis,
nightmares, psycho-somatic diseases; like that postponed leukaemia in the south of Banat in
Vojvodina, as the consequence of the spielbergesque-apocalyptic ‘99 Eastern NATO bombing
(poisonous clouds over the Pan~evo petro-industry, when the Etylen factory was hit). The
most remarkable biological catastrophe that I can remember was the recommendation to
the women in south of Banat, whose pregnancy was under three months, to have an abor-
tion, as the effects of the disaster on children are unpredictable. I searched for this announce-
ment like for the proof of a divine response to the hubris of a society whose phantasm to sac-
rifice its own children for the graves of the ancestors in so many wars is crowned by the
silent and deathly swipe. The hand who executes this will also defend itself from the horror
soon (now, maybe), in the ancient circle of justice. We, the survivors, can escape the trap in
which our parents were caught, making up the years of the spiritual deficit by some sort of
totemism. We don’t substitute our ancestors with the graves of our children, we are invest-
ing them into our children lives.
But what is utterly unacceptable is the qualification »stuck in their youth«, which
suggests the image of us, confused and stunned, helplessly young until we wake up old. This
is now seen as deathly and sexy - stuck youth as a consequence of the difficulties in the nat-
ural process of maturation - (and social and economic reasons are numbered, »No sex, please,
we are the Post Serbs«2). Again, it’s a prejudice, which I-the object, had to reject. Helplessness
is the state of mind that I had been through in 1998, and it is over. I called it by its name,
recognised it and buried it forever that year. I don’t accept any attempt to read me as help-
less, and if these portraits give any reason for such an interpretation, then they are my ene-
mies. If it happens that I felt hostile once more, after all that I saw and went through, I might
fall into the essential helplessness, like Bodnar wrote, and I remember too:
I was lying
and in my sleep I saw
heads cut off.
Those were all 2 Paraphrase of Slavoj @ièk
the heads of my text »No sex, please, we are
Post Humans«, published in
enemies. Prelom magazine, magazine
which is going to fight the
Other Serbia discourse, wish
them luck, and I mentioned
(Milo{ Bodnar, »The Heads Cut Off«, 1998) @ièk in my text, who doesn’t
mention @ièk, don’t save him,
God, from German planes and
angry women (the paraphrase
of the epic speech before the
Masinka Lukic show, in front of
McDonald’s in Belgrade 1999,
organized by Zoran Naskovski,
who doesn’t know Zoran
English redaction: Khadija Z-Carroll Naskovski. . .)
Slobodan Karamani}
POST-TRAUMATIC YOUTH AND THE

CONSERVATION BY WAY OF INDIVIDUAL
EXPERIENCE
Dear Caca,
I’ve finally read both texts. I think that the polemics you broached is very important
and requires further discussion. Your reaction appears to me quite natural, especially when
one bears in mind that it comes right from your habitat and – precisely the target of my
forthcoming criticism – your ideological discourse. Therefore I will here try to show main
threads of my disagreement with your proposition. I was not only urged to do it by an
extraordinary inspiration you awoke in me (because it will certainly not result in any poetic
expression in my discourse that is basically incapable of it) nor by the need to defend the
author of Suspended Adolescence, but precisely by the fact that the meaning of your text far
exceeds the simple (negative?) reaction to an interpretation and is to that extent equally
dangerous as the one you held dangerous enough to make it an object of your critique.
Namely, it touches the nerve of our (that is my, but not only my) reasoning.
First of all, I cannot agree that your hope is not sacrificized »in the name of coherence
of some system of interpretation«. The sacrifice has already been made, and a big one too.
Your desire to avoid it, however, can serve as an excuse for cer-
tain inconsistencies you might have made in the process of
concluding, but I will do my best to prove that your system of
thinking is far from inconsistent, that it is moreover logical and
well-grounded, albeit also riven with contradictions.
Marshall Tito’s funeral
Your position could be designated in broad terms and in
terms of contemporary theory as a critique of essentialism.
Concretely, you object to a simple substitution of one pair of
stereotypes (the first/second Serbia) with another (»post-trau-
matic youth«). However, it doesn’t mean a thing without fur-
ther explication and without thinking an anti-essentialist cri-
tique to its conclusions. In other words, even if we both take a
critique of essentialism as our starting point, nothing guaran-
tees us that we will get to the same place. In accordance with our point of departure and fur-
ther steps we take, we can end up anywhere within a broad spectrum of political options
from liberal individualistic pluralism/multicultural postmodernism to lesbian separatism or
Maoist collectivism.
You take yourself as example and consider your own experience so different that it
cannot be fit into a model, not even a one of a generation:
»Therefore, I will speak only for myself, because my aim is to show how impos-
sible it is to clinically make diagnosis of something that does not exist. Our gen-
eration does not exist (an axiom: generation=generation’ s shared memory)«
Although you speak strictly for yourself, it’s not worth pointing out because your dis-
course as it is cannot speak for somebody else apart from yourself personally. However, this
is the whole point of such an ideological discourse. It is linked to the following questions:
speaking for yourself, do you really speak for yourself or does someone else (or something
else) speak through you? This is one question. The other is: speaking for yourself, do you
speak in the name of others (in my name, for example)? In other words, protecting yourself
from Branko’s protection, do you protect me as well (though that might not have been your
basic intention)? Taking yourself as example, did it occur to you that your insistence on the
personal experience was just a part of a broader ideological strategy?1 In the final analysis of
your answers, we might perhaps learn that you speak either from the position of the subject
of ideology or, simply from the position of an ideological subject.
I have to admit that I’ve been reading philosophical anthropology lately and that it
seems to me that this kind of literature boils down to endeavors at substantializing man by
way of various determinations. Apart from the fact that I consider that type of philosophiz-
ing outmoded, I found it extremely useful to get acquainted with concepts often encoun-
1 Here I would like to advise you tered today in twisted modulations and various modes of expression
on a reference. Namely, instead – even on the level of everyday speech. Hence your poetic speech also
of late carnivalesque Bakhtin,
read the Bahktin of Marxism and reminded me of Jaspers’s apprehension of human existence. Just like
the Philosophy of Language. You you, he adduces certain intimate quality: »a man can reach it only
will find that individual con-
sciousness is a social ideological through himself«. This quality is instilled into human subjectivity
fact, although the ideological sign but is at the same time transcendent (only, this transcendence is hid-
is alive by the token of its psychi-
cal fulfillment and its emotional
den). A man is not once and for all, he is a road which »represents the
charge. possibility, due to the freedom on the basis of which he decides what
he is in the course of his factual action«. According to Jaspers, the purpose of this road is tran-
scendence. When you say that »the experience of people whose richness/lack of experience
naturally assures the originality of its classification and attempts to transpose it into individ-
ual cases.This may be their only hope of having something still under their control«, Jaspers
supports you: »The true philosophy of existence is a question which signifies the appeal by
way of which man today strains to return to his own self«. He goes on to say that »the cre-
ation of a metaphysical material world or the obviousness of the source of being is nothing
when detached from existence«. You in turn remark that »driven into an escapism (metatex-
tual, and Bodnar, Tijana, Dejan and me, south-Banat-metaphysical), we got an ability to com-
municate under the language.« 2
However, the problem with such a way of comprehending the human as being-for-
itself as opposed to being-in-itself, as in any other liberal ideology, is that the levels of analy-
sis of subjectivation have been confused. In his famous The Meaning of Contemporary
Realism, Lukács, cracking down on modernist writers, invokes Hegel’s distinction between
abstract and concrete potentiality:
»Abstract potentiality entirely belongs to the realm of 2 Taking into account that I originate
subjectivity; while concrete potentiality is concerned with from similar though »mid-Banat«
regions, I am quite familiar with the
dialectics between the subjectivity of an individual and an philosophy of metaphysical mysticism
objective reality. Literary description of the latter hence present in the speech of the young in
Zrenjanin who think that they have
implies the description of real persons that inhabit a tan- grown terribly old in their troubles. As
gible, recognizable world. Concrete potentiality of an indi- for the metalanguage you are alleged-
ly capable of, it is also acceptable only
vidual can be isolated from the ‘good infinity’ of purely in a metaphysical determination.
abstract potentiality only in an interaction of character and environment and

appear as a decisive potentiality of this very individual and this very phase of
his development. The principle itself enables the artist to distinguish concrete
potentiality from the multitude of abstractions.«
Otherwise, if we start from the ontologically based conception of man as lonely, ulti-
mately wretched, mortal but also wondering and open to the world, we can never effect con-
crete analysis of a certain individual under certain circumstances. On the contrary:
»If the difference between abstract and concrete reality disappears, if human
inclination towards the inner world is identified with an abstract subjectivity,
human personality inevitably has to fall apart.«
A claim about the imperfection of language can also serve to illustrate your ontolo-
gization. The claim itself is not disputable, but your celebration of conceptualization of that
imperfection and your raising it to the level of the tragic – which essentially characterizes
philosophy of existentialism – certainly is. Apart from similarity with Jaspers, what is indica-
tive is you mentioning Camus, your Kierkegaardian rejection of Hegelian totality by finding
various contradictions in plural and by defending individual subjectivity against objective
universality, which inevitably ends up in religious distanciation from the Creator. However
imperfect, language is all we have. The very claim that it is imperfect remains within lan-
guage, and I don’t really see why it should be problematized. Only a psychotic person can
think she stands outside language. And I’ve never noticed any such symptoms on you. On
the contrary, your reaction, along with your entire social engagement up to now, tells of your
quite successful castration into the symbolic register of the Belgrade milieu, be it a Low-fi
production. Hence rather than accept your attempt to distance yourself, I consider your reac-
tion as a characteristically liberal rejection of the totalization of thinking. Yet, what is dis-
putable here is precisely that we live in a total relationship of mutual production, to which
your own speech can testify and from which it originates. The choices we are presented with
are utterly constricted; there’s no denying this. They are reduced either to a false alternative
of the first/second Serbia, rural/urban, war/anti-war, authoritative/democratic, which is
utterly hegemonic, or to the possibility to decide to transcend this nausea by invoking per-
sonal experience.
When you say that our generation does not exist, I can be even more radical and say
along with Laclau (combined with Lacan) that not only generation but also that society does
not exist either. In other words, the place, which appears instead of the possibility of empir-
ical foundation of society, is empty. Society is the place that is only filled with certain con-
tents through specific signifying formations. Identification you accept or renounce depends
equally on the contents proffered or forced upon you and your place in the given structure of
relations. @ièk is even more radical when he thinks Lacan to his conclusions and designates
the subject as an empty space in the structure. @ièk thinks that split in the subject which
makes him incapable of actualizing his full identity has to be distinguished from social
antagonism. The subject is thus only a co-relation of his own constrictions since he is inca-
pable of possessing any »substance«. Therefore, I agree one cannot speak of concrete and
empirical entity called »a generation«. It is, however, possible through special articulation
called forth by certain circumstances.
Branko’s text does not however speak of a specific generational experience but of
bridging a specific dichotomic representation which has to find a way out in a third element,
an element irreducible to such polarization. Only now the problem becomes visible - to what
extent this third element can perform its function and break the rigid dichotomy? Or is it
again a place of closing? It certainly is. By the same token it however offers the salvation
from the ‘bad infinity’ of invoking personal experience and a multitude of small and contin-
ual traumas. Branko is concerned not only with a certain trauma of context, but with a spe-
cial representation and conceptualization of that trauma in the image of the first and the
second Serbia. Besides, he presents a phenomenon of narcisism as a form of production of
subjectivity. Suspended Adolescence can thus be comprehended as a moment of decontextu-
alization i.e. pulling this experience out from a specific traumatic space and fitting it into a
wider context of narcissism as a general subjectivity model (see Christopher Lash, Narcissistic
Culture).
You admit that there is an experience we have all shared. But we are trying to disperse
it into fragments at any cost. In effect, you accept the concept of Suspended Adolescence
entirely, but interpret it in a special and deeply disputable way: as an impossibility of a com-
mon elaboration of experience. You claim that we have too much generational experience
and that it is precisely the reason why we are left to make our own selections. In the midst
of, in your own words, »richness/ lack of experience«, what happens is that it »naturally
assures the originality of its classification and attempts to transpose it into individual cases«.
What a perfect formulation of an apolitical narcissism of the New Age ideology! Although a
designation Du{an Grlja thought of is equally telling – an underground naivete.
In my view, what we should do is precisely elaborate and create that experience our-
selves by gaining knowledge of the causes of our present situation and make it politically
active by doing so. But we will certainly not be able to do it if we invoke an authentic »world
of life« only to transcend it, but through a collectively produced ideology i.e. exactly the
reverse of what you are forcefully rejecting, understanding it as an extraction of your piece
in the name of a group. And why would you sacrifice your own authentic person when the
»covering« of your own New Age ideology perfectly suits you? So it turns out that paradoxi-
cally, you advocate precisely what Branko wrote about: the narcissism of personal experi-
ence. That’s why you don’t manage to realize that suspension of adolescence he refers to did
not happen nor will happen on the level of individual experience. We all went through it
more or less successfully. The metaphore of the tower of your childhood (you fail to mention
the asylum) plastically speaks of your successfully overcome adolescence. Your ability to
reflect on your childhood proves it. Yet, some adolescences can never be overcome, especial-
ly the ones that have been articulated within ideological mechanisms.
It does you and your friends credit that you are honest and do not seek fame, but then
why mock the artists who actually succeeded in making a breakthrough from their own
»self-blamed underage« of Serbia you yourself fight against. For, although Low-fi will go on
showing fragments of human destinies of ‘being-for-itself’ and ‘being there’ in Heideggerian
manner, such a model of the production of knowledge will forever remain marginal, narcis-
sistic and closed.
Therefore it will always differ from our attempt to ground collective action (regardless
of the name of a collectivity which carries it out) in a stable and totalizing discourse able to
interfere in the stream of real relations of the production of knowledge. A politics that would
be able to invoke what Badiou called an endless situation. If, on the contrary, our action
remains locked within the bounds of the permissible (e.g. art) and ineffective in forcing its
own hegemony on a broader sphere, it will designate our own death. In that case we can do
nothing but abdicate. In the cosy shelter of your own privacy, you will not have any prob-
lems fitting in and conserving your experiences in a can of some who-knows-what Serbia –
Serbia which is for you fundamentally-ontologically unthinkable entity.
Therefore I am not your Boba. The images I presented are not the »images of life« of a
Low-fi video, real events or deep traverse of my spiritual life, but political and geo-political
metaphores, alegorical representation of social reality which is only an abstraction, an
insight, an interpretation. It would be necessary to clarify the genesis of such a mode of inter-
pretation, but it would be too long and I will pick up most important point. Namely, a good
deal of my thesis relied on a text entitled Etwas Ganz Anders that was written as a critique of
the ruling scientism and essentialism in our social sciences. At that stage of research there
was no better suggestion than the one I got from Branimir Stojanovi}-Tr{a, who designated
it as porno nihilism. After that, my conceptions experienced radical rearticulation. I retained
the concept of ‘the third television generation’ as a necessary delimitation of my object of
study. I wanted to touch on the phenomenon I consider a general trend (and hence is not
merely generational) of speeded-up articulation by way of new media calling forth, on one
hand, an illusion of dispersiveness and proliferation of meaning and producing a homoge-
neous stream of articulation of that dispersiveness as a form of collective experience on the
other. Today I would reject many of the claims I made there, but two images I showed have
indeed been a reduction (too true to be true) I made due to specific theoretical-practical rea-
sons. Had I chosen the images of people at Usce and at the Freedom Square, that would be
another matter. Let me repeat, these are not existentialistic »images of the world«, but
images which the world associates with us. For me these were the images of decisive politi-
cal moments within which scandals are possible, such as various rearticulations starting
from the »fundamental humanism« (»I as a man, a humanist«) to »active nihilism« (….) to
populistic fascism.
Therefore, even within an essentialistic representation of a political situation it is pos-
sible to encompass all the variants of quite special experiences in love with its own context,
self-interpretation, self reflexion or whatever creative existential New Age philosophers can
think of.
Yours truly,
Slobodan Karamani}
November 8, 2001
NATO’s bombing, Greetings from Belgrade,

postcard, photo: Andrija Ili}, 1999
Du{an Grlja
(DE)GENERATION IN »PROTEST«
OR
THE DEFENSE AND THE LAST
DAYS OF »OTHER SERBIA«
It’ such a pleasure to see a dialogue restored among us after it had been exiled for so
many years. In the lumber room of the dominant paradigm of Communication, the only
thing worth »recycling« is the exchange of opinions faced by those who try to lead vita acti-
va (Hannah Arendt). A polemic is an excellent way to try to wriggle out of the imagined »pos-
itive roles« and make a contact with other »agents«, differentiating at least one’s own
approach in the process. Of course, there is always a danger that multitude of monologues
has been established rather than a dialogue, illustrating a popular saying that »two of a
trade never agree«. Before I vindicate the objections that I »generalize things« (that, in keep-
ing with my trade, I »sociologize« too much), let me elucidate my understanding of the posi-
tions of the participants in this modest, but - I am convinced - very significant debate. I
would by the way also like to present my own views based on the attempt to interpret the
entire debate in terms of the passage from »other Serbia« to a representation of »the global
Serbia«. I consider focal points of this debate to be question of a generation as a social agency,
the question of a political engagement of this »identity group« and the question of the new
representation of Serbia as »global«. And I would like to offer answers to those questions tak-
ing a research conducted by An|elka Mili} and Ljiljana î~kari} entitled A Generation In
Protest (abb. GIP) as my starting point, since I consider it a paradigmatic achievement of local
empirical researches of the student protest.
Phil Collins has attempted to offer a representation of a »liberated Serbia«, an every-
day Serbia cleansed of the political context, that is, something completely different from the
representation of »the other Serbia«. Trying to avoid »urban grit« and catch »a romantic sen-
sibility«, well-meaning Phil is proud of his intention to represent »young Serbs« as faces from
the neighbourhood coming straight from a »commercial/shampoo ad«. Young Serbs thus fit
into a »transformation society« of eastern Europe as an integrated part of the EU, which
reads in the following way: »even if you can’t bear them, you have to admit an uneasy
resemblance to our own youth.« If there were not for the title »young Serbs«, those faces
could easily be found anywhere within the Union, even if they have »a bucolic, dissappoint-
ed, suspicious« look.
Branko Dimitrijevi} protested against Collins’s offer of such an intimate context, since
a Serbian intimacy cannot be separated from the political, stating a suspended adolescence of
young Serbs and citing »unemployment, no committed relationships, conservatism at the
universities and so on« as the causes. However, using this perhaps too weakly argumented
descriptive term for young Serbs, Branko puts them into a context of globalized society, prob-
ably intending to do the opposite, namely, to give them a specific, autochthonic Serbian con-
text. The terms such as »sustained youth« and »social childhood« entered the arsenal of
social sciencies towards the end of the 80s to designate the position of the young in the
»developed world«. However, Branko is for once right: narcissism is a constituent part of that
suspended adolescence. It is however connected to sexuality only insofar as we regard »sex-
uality« as one of the mechanisms constituting modern subject. Narcissism is a cultural
model of subject production in contemporary capitalism and consequently a narcissistic per-
sonality of young Serbs has to be seen as a systematic requirement if we attempt to think
Serbia as a part of the »civilized world«.
Above mentioned processes of »sustained youth« and »social childhood« described by
the (not so) recent »sociological imagination« can clearly be observed in the current trend of
the extension of youth to more than one third of human life and a postponement in the age
of employment, marrage and founding a family. Taking this into account, Branko’s charac-
terization of »young Serbs« as suspended adolescents is less a product of »traumatic times«
than a tendency to get Serbia closer to the »civilized Europe«. Namely, »the young« or
»youth« is a historical social category, meaning that it has been created during social devel-
opment and that it is characterized by a specific »role« within a historically changeable
social framework. »Youth« as a social category emerges in modern society (mass phenome-
non of Western late-capitalistic consumer societies) and can be defined as »an entity partly
characterized by certain features of a group and a unique structural matrix of growing-up i.e.
specific institutional relations and institutional room…in the form of a specific socio-histori-
cal order of generational relations by means of which young people….are socially defined,
positioned and the process of their growing-up and initiation in the world of grown-ups con-
trolled.« (GIP, pp.13-14). »The young« and »youth« become a »category« along with the poor,
the undeveloped, persons with low IQ, intellectuals, women, children and the old who
remain outside the field of activity of independent, rational subjects. To boot, the basic char-
acteristic of the social position of »the young« and »youth« is that they do not fall within the
category of »adults« (in the Enlightenment tradition those who are materially independent
of others i.e. have their own means of subsistence and who are spiritually independent of
others i.e. capable of using their own reason to judge and act accordingly. The conception of
»de-synchronized youth« also allows for the existence of those who are not »adult« but are
also no longer young. This overlaps with certain »deconstruction« of »youth« in some »post-
modern« conceptions within which Branko’s suspended adolescence could be broadened to
embrace the life of the entire nation. I think we could all agree that the personality of the sav-
iour embodied in Slobodan Milo{evi} has not been readily embraced only by »authoritative
personalities« of our »traditional mentality«, but has also served as a general excuse for
failed lives, poverty-stricken existence and junkie paranoia (I have recently heard a useful
formulation: Run-aways are not those who went away, but those who stayed on.)
Regarding Aleksandra Sekuli}-Caca’s »defense« against the stereotype of »personal
experience« and its subsumption into a form of »post-traumatic generation«, I feel very sym-
pathetic towards it since I am myself a »young Serb« in his (late) »twenties«. What is how-
ever disputable, in my view, is Caca’s investment of »hope« in the »quality of the network of
friends I cherished for a number of years, who, all of them in their own way but also togeth-
er, transpose their experience (heavy to the point of turning into its own deprivation…) into
an irreproducible and honest (rather than schematically construed) answer.« The problem is
not that there is a group of people who exchange their experiences, but the form of the »net-
work« in which »works sincere almost to the point of naivety« are produced, an operation
typical of the dominant mode of cultural models production. Namely, Caca’s rejection of a
generational unity in her formulation: »we are deprived of the generational experience
because we have had too many of it, and in that variety it has been cornered into individual
selections«, in my view, clearly implies an understanding of a »generation« as a group of
unrelated initiatives which in the final analysis are associated by the similarity of existential
problems. This implied (unrecognized) content adequately conveys an understanding of
youth in the prevailing political discourse as a part of »informal civic initiatives«, that is, a
part of the civil society. In the prevailing scientific discourse we can also find a corresponding
characterization: »After 1968, what emerges is »a society without youth«. In place of a
unique youthful matrix of growing-up, a new quality emerges: pluralization of models, ways
and lifestyles of the young; rather than how to conform the young to a socializing model, the
issues of building and strengthening individual identity come to prevail. The young have
cast off »the yoke« of a uniform socializing model of a modern society that had previously
been imposed by the grown-ups and have embarked on an adventure of postmodern search
for their own identity« (GIP, p. 22). The conclusion, which corresponds to both Caca’s and the
»official« position, is that the youth has dissolved into a concrete self-identifying practice.
Characteristic of Caca’s refusal to recognize »ideologized« contents in her own posi-
tion is her claim about Low-fi that »the same process of production and screening was pro-
tected by a sheltered atmosphere.« Emphasizing personal creative shaping of life experience
in Serbia in the 90s, Caca puts the process of sending and showing the videos in the context
of friendly exchange. That would be quite true of an informal group of enthusiasts who pri-
vately gather to enjoy their friends’ videos. But, though this remains the content of Low-fi,
there is the fact that Low-fi is also a part of local (Rex and B92) as well as international (vari-
ous festivals and organizations who give them financial support) cultural institutions. And
precisely this institutional context makes us see Low-fi as one of those »unrelated civic ini-
tiatives« which fit into a model of »networking« as a dominant organizational form of

»multi-cultural society«. Taking the risk to sound old-fashioned (and ostentatious) let me say
that we are presented with a problem of adequate understanding of one’s own »genera-
tional« position within the »relations of the production of social life.«
In an attempt to provide arguments for this point of view, I will once again employ
the achievements and relevant findings of contemporary social sciences so as to advance my
own argumentation. Every government keeps saying that the young generation harbors an
»elite« (referring predominantly to students) who will replace the existing »elite«. Students,
future experts who will take top positions in social life, are thus the primary target of a polit-
ical socialization which should »produce« the material operative within the prevailing order.
»In institutionally segregated space, the young are exposed to unifying, homogenizing,
socializing formation the aim of which is to bring up future subservient members of society,
efficient carriers of its economy as a productive backbone of the order« (GIP, p. 19). That insti-
tutionally segregated space, in which »candidates for initiation into the world of grown-
ups« reside, is characterized by a fundamental contradiction. It lies in the »relative autono-
my from the rest of society« and a permitted aberration from the normal behavior of a
grown-up individual. But domination and stability of a (political) system is measured by the
broadness of the »margin« i.e. the permitted aberration from what is normal. In other words:
a system is more stable the more heterogeneous elements it successfully »interpellates«. The
concept of »generational politics«, used by contemporary social science in an analysis of the
position of the young, is symptomatic in that regard. It includes »a process of ‘dethroning’ an
older generation which belongs to the past epoch and an old system and the process of
‘empowering’ a new generation which emerges on the eve of the new millenium« (GIP, p.
232). The term itself is ambiguous: it can refer to a policy pursued in respect of a generation
or a policy pursued by that generation. Precisely in the blurring of this difference and the
tacit emphasis on the first conception one can recognize ideological function of such a dis-
course. Emphasizing that the »process of empowerment« of one’s generation should be
interpreted as cultural-political symbolical act of announcing one’s presence in the public
space and a multi-cultural act of self-identification and one’s own self-fulfillment« rather
than as a »party-ideological struggle and the generational change on the positions of power
and authority« (GIP, p. 232), the authors reiterate a consistent demand that the young keep
away from everyday politics. Now we observe how both political/systematical and »scien-
tific« characterizations of a »generation« tend to create ideologically grounded social catego-
ry and contents of its activity. If a »generation« is not a group of »informal civic initiatives«
or an empirically (re)constructed social group measured by certain »indicators« within a rep-
resentative sample showing a concentration of those indicators around certain value (date-
based selection of cohort aggregation), what is it then? I think a »generation« can only
appear as an agency (the subject of immediate political activity) if it is effectively politicized
and if it performs activities within existing and emergant institutions.
For a discussion of the relationship between »the young/youth/generation« and pol-
itics, Caca’s claim that »we are driven into escapism« is symptomatic. She is certainly right
in the sense that we are condemned to rummage through the ruins of language or social
structure and it does not necessarily lead to a politically passivized escapism. This is howev-
er not a specific characteristic of the position of the young in the »Serbian« society of the 90s,
but a general characteristic of the position of the young in a modern era. Those who care
about Marxist terminology would say that escapism represents an ideology of the young
bourgeois class striving to construct the reality of young people according to its own unfin-
ished Rousseauian myth of freedom, an escape into nature and the world of pure emotions.
Hence fierce rejection and prevention of interference of politics in the world of the young
and their growing-up. As for the »Serbian« society of the 90s, the best excuse for a »disgust
with politics« has been furnished by politicians themselves. In my view, a general character-
istic of the position of the young in Serbian public arena in the 90s is something I would term
the state of protest. From the »velvet revolution« on Terazije Square in 1991, to student
protests in 1992 and 1996/7 to the »revolution of October 5«, we can see a kind of a history of
political engagement of the »generation«. That engagement could be seen in a liberal per-
spective as the student protest’s demand that the political i.e. public space of action of free
citizens (constitution libertatis in Hannah Arendt) be established. For the authors of GIP it is
indubitable: »As a newly emerged collective identity, the student protest reacted to the neg-
ative social and political phenomena: the lack of the rule of law and a civil society, a threat
to civil rights and freedoms, the manifestation of political and spiritual regression (GIP, p.
68). However, a deeply ideological meaning of such a formulation can be detected in the
phrase the means of attainment of a »new political culture« i.e. in the defense of basic polit-
ical values of a democratic society. The means of attainment are associated with »the dislo-
cation of social conflicts from traditional spheres to the spheres of culture, personal identity,
individual style, spare time and everyday life« (GIP, p. 213). The insistence on the »symboli-
cal« arsenal of cultural rebellion on the level of everyday life is especially present within the
prevailing social science in terms such as »post-modernist spectacle«, »street-theatre« or
»carnival«. Actually, the protest represented the »carnival« only insofar as it represented a
celebration in which ruling norms and hierarchies have been exposed to ridicule. But the
»mechanism« of a celebration has an entirely different goal: to bring life back into the nor-
mal/the established/the sanctioned in the wake of crisis and catharsis. Integrative value of
this celebration can be discerned in a »complicity in crime« which remains a basic character-
istic of the life in Serbia in the 90s. This phrase is supposed to designate an impossibility of
political action outside the situation in which the existence of the »repressive regime of
Slobodan Milo{evi}« is the sole alibi for the existence of the opposition.
Every common sense now justly wonders how can a »transpolitical« action constitute
the »political«. This contradiction corresponds to the prevailing politicization of the »civil
society« towards an »extra-institutional practicing of democracy« through various NGOs.
Thus a true nature of political engagement of »the young/ youth/ generation« is revealed as
in effect politically passivized (which is most often accomplished by alleged neutrality with-
in the political – the apolitical). The apolitical is political par excellence, because its passivity
sustains prevailing political constellation. In my view, protest as the state of the »genera-
tion« in Serbia in the 90s represents an apolitical resignation.
The 80s in Yugoslavia attest that forms of this state can also be discerned in previous
»generations«. As Caca mentioned, »in the 80s« some people have developed something
what might be termed an underground naivety. Here I refer to extra-institutional activity
and creativity through self-taught cultural forms and the activities of the Student Cultural
Centre in Belgrade during the 80s can serve to illustrate that. An underground naivety cor-
responds to the ripe state of collapse of the self-management socialism and its role is more
or less exhausted in portending the imminent catastrophe. However, a catastrophic con-
sciousness of the collapse of the reality of self-management socialism (and a Marxism »with
a human face«) turned towards the end of the decade into a »running away« from the disin-
tegration of the individual and from the physical break-up of the state (the »civil« war). What
ensued is abovementioned apolitical resignation in the form of a protest. An alternative was
recognized in a return to expressiveness of the underground naivety, but very soon it was to
adopt – mostly owing to B92 - a proffered path towards progressive »Balkanization« of the
creative expression of the young. And however Caca might dispute it, Low-fi is a part of it,
along with the protest as a part of the representation of the »other Serbia«.
One does not have to be especially well versed in theoretical elaboration of the topic
to conclude that this representation of »the other Serbia« corresponds to »this Serbia« where
we find »proprietary monopoly of the ruling party over the state, its material resources and
the future of its people« (GIP, p. 7). In my view, after the changes of October 5, »the other
Serbia« has become a representation of the »globalized« Serbia that takes part in »civiliza-
tional trends«. However, one element is retained which seems to contradict this »rapproche-
ment with the world«. That element appears in discussions about the so-called »turbo-folk
culture«, understood to correspond to the process of re-traditionalization of our society. This
may seem a tendency that sets Serbia apart from world trends. However, precisely the
reverse is true: re-traditionalized Serbia perfectly fits multi-cultural trends of the postmod-
ern world. Albeit far from the everyday milieu, the confirmation of this can be found in the
fact that television Pink has done more to spread contemporary global cultural models than
any Education for Democracy program. Therefore, the problem is not to fight for or against
»globalized Serbia«, because in the eyes of the world we remain the representation of the
Other, but to find our own modes of activity within the offered representation.
APPENDIX:
At the end of this polemical pamphlet confusing as much as its topic, I think my authorial
duty is to give a personal view of the possibility of escaping the described »generational« sit-
uation of »politically frustrated generation«. Far from wanting to make the following state-
ment a doctrinaire »What is To Be Done?« but with the intention to be equally far from the
comfortable contemplation of institutional environment, I think there are two combina-
tions/strategies. The first would be a simple way out of the state of protest i.e. a state of apo-
litical resignation, into direct political activity. All those who delude themselves with the
idea that one can be politically active outside of what is considered to be political life (includ-
ing political parties, Yugoslav, Serbian and local institutions of government – legislative,
executive and judicial – as well as strategic points in the economic life, which, taken togeth-
er, represents an inextricable skein of local politics) are very much mistaken. Therefore,
instead of »apolitical« or underground naivety of disconnected, informal civic initiatives, one
has to become an actual politician and »dirty one’s hands«. The second possibility is to pass
from the state of protest to the position of criticism. The content of the activity of that posi-
tion could be termed within academic scientific paradigm as »the social role of an intellectu-
al«. Now who manages to attain the ideal of the unity of thought and action deserves cred-
it, but without striving towards that end we cannot entertain a hope in the conscious polit-
ical activation.
Milan Rakita
INSTEAD OF A PROLOGUE AND SUMMARY
CONVERSATION PIECE
Although directly invited to give his opinion on the artwork and the polemic, and
maybe in fear of being involved once more in the questioning of his own identity, the author
of these lines hesitated for a long time to embark on another adventure of inscribing mean-
ing to these ever so direct photographs, left as an ungratifying duty by the artist, a mischie-
vous rascal and crook, the devil himself. The swindler ran away, leaving us with the empty
photographs, empty meaning void of the typical topos which defined the image of the col-
lective identity of this region in the recent past. We were left alone in front of our own image
in the mirror. At once, it became clear that, apart from not being young any more, we can nei-
ther be the old, well known Serbs. As in the meantime, according to a widespread opinion, a
revolution took place, which symbolically divided our time to the ‘time before’ and the ‘time
after’. This partition left us alone, confronted with the possibility of choice, to which we
became unaccustomed. Or, perhaps, the freedom of deciding comes down to a choice
between false alternatives. But, on the most universal level, the scope of variations accord-
ing to this ’post-revolutionary default’ does not amount too much. It ranges from the recu-
peration of the ‘historic Serb’ identity or its countering ’other Serbian’, to the possibility of
construction, but also the recuperation of the ‘new’ post-traumatic, i.e. current ‘third way’
identity model. Which of these will make us more or less Serbs, and which will make us more
or less old or young, is a question of entirely subjective estimations, but still not of an agreed
articulation of the current historical position in all the spheres of its manifestation. In any
case, the projection of the image of one’s own identity had to be directed, first of all, towards
the logic of personal as political, bearing in mind the specific local context in which it had
been positioned for a long time.
Thus, in the polemic, ‘The Young Serbs’ were left at the mercy of individuals who rep-
resent those ‘Young Serbs’, but, who, I dare say, in direct confrontation with the offered
model of representation, experienced a feeling of unease. It is possible that this apprehen-
sion was an expression of a certain locally generated anxiety, which emerged in contact with
what Collins’s photographs implicate only slightly - an open possibility of becoming some-
thing other in relation to the standard repertoire of the aforementioned identity strategies.
Anyway, initiating an investigation of the origin and quality of the trauma and political frus-
tration, which, by the way, abounds more or less in all the individual texts of the polemic, we
can begin with an observation that practically every one of them, in their own specific way,
almost unconsciously refuses to resolve their representational role, indicated by the title, in
Collins’s work. Deadly serious, narcissistically and self-confidently, we undertook to measure
the extent of the political in the work in question. And once again, an elementary consensus
was absent! The reactions varied between defending the right to be apolitical, a reserved
neutrality of a para-academic and para-prose discourse, to a significant politisation of the
content of Collins’s work. In the meantime, as in every heated discussion, the initiating pho-
tographs of Collins’s work were somewhat forgotten. In the beginning, not one of the partic-
ipants noticed that they could suddenly become specifically emancipating. And not in some
sort of political sense projected by ourselves. The picturesque and pictorial quality of the
scene in the photographs could have led us to a completely different interpretation. A more
flexible one, and with a more moderate disengagement from the assumed representational
role, to a different projection of our own view of the world which wouldn’t necessarily be dis-
possessed of its designated political aspect. On the contrary! In this way the self-inflicted
proliferation of an overload of political threatened to turn us into New Serbs, a particular sort
of Very Young Serbs. And we obviously forgot that, after all, it was only art, although, indeed,
politically intoned art.
But, let us, for the moment, leave aside this undoubtedly significant (hyper) polemical
aspect of the polemic, in order to pose a question: What is really the catch in Collins’s photo-
graphs? Why did we naively believe that the work presented by the artist really deals with
some young Serbs? Where did this self-inflicted excess of vague recognition come from? Why
are these photographs veristic to such an extent for us that we take their authenticity for
granted?
The impression is that everyone exploited Collins’s work to promote their own truths,
feverishly holding onto them as if a colossal investment were at stake, rejecting the offered
chance to be something ‘other’. This is the focal point of Collins’s attempt to come up with a
different kind of observation and a new view. Because of this interesting and symptomatic,
but at the same time, engaging detail, I will try not to offend any of the participants of the
polemic by questioning their personal contributions through my observations. Furthermore,
my primary intention is not to deal with a person’s particular text, but to attempt, in the suc-
cession of different investments and reactions which created this polemic, as we named it,
to discern a specific perceptive/communicational logic which, although comprising antago-

nistic views, undoubtedly proposes a context (or several potential contexts) to Collins’s pho-
tographs, which for their part possess a certain surplus, i.e. shortage of meaning, that forms
a precise context for a work of art. This is why I will be interested in the fluctuating relation
which is formed between the polemic and Collins’s work, and vice versa: how is the channel
of their communication formed and at what points the course of influence changes, securing
‘priority status’ to one of the two parties in defining the other, i.e. in relation to which posi-
tion of one of them, the context (artistic, historical, social, cultural, political) of the other is
defined. Risking to simplify this issue completely, the question I ask is: What comes first,
Collins’s Young Serbs or the texts of the polemic?
THE ADVENTURES OF CONTEXT
Thanks to its ironic ploy using a completely new representational model by which it decon-
structed an all too recognizable policy of representation, and seemingly clearing it of all the
meanings typically associated with a suggestive representational idiom, the presented
image of ‘The Young Serbs’ became a little too ‘clean’ in respect to the code of perception in
this environment. Thus, in line with the logic of interpretational mannerism it had to be
placed in a cliché in which potential ‘slips’ would not disturb the customary representation-
al scheme. The discrepancy between what the naked scene of ‘The Young Serbs’ offers and
what is only discretely indicated by the title of the work, brings out a true trauma to the view
accustomed to the habitual practice in representing the political. The inability to assimilate
the object visually, which now became unrecognizable, impels us to project our own worn
out ‘old’ view, receptive only to the familiar representations of the political, into the not so
transparent remains of what was once the structure of a privileged representational model.
In this way, the search for the signs of social history, i.e. for the social factors which outline
the signs in Collins’s photographs, comes down to a direct provoking of context, political
indeed. As for the status of ‘truthfulness’ of the created context which provides different
readings of the photographs, it can be said that it is as true as much as we invest it with cer-
tain ‘truths’.
That is how the ‘truth’ about ‘The Young Serbs’ perpetually shifts from context to con-
text, through the (auto) reflection of each participant in the polemic, gaining entirely new
meanings. In connection to this, another, less important question arises: Does this mean that
Branislav Dimitrijevi}’s text (which chronologically precedes the others) loses its ‘prece-
dence’ in interpretative status, and is it not that in this way, Collins’s work indirectly enters
a new series of unpredicted designation chains, which now in return, each according to its
own truth, i.e. specific context in which this truth is articulated, present it with a totally dif-
ferent context and new life? Even when in some texts it is not the artwork that is directly
referred to (which is the case in almost all of them except the one by Dimitrijevi}) but the
previous texts, this unique transformation of contexts takes place concurrently with the
change of the ‘internal’ direction and course of the polemic, although the logic of this change
can only seemingly be lead by some uses of its own, independently of the photographs. And
here we discover the position and status of Dimitrijevi}’s text. Namely, the connection
between the ‘rest’ of the polemic and the artwork is established only through this text, which
(although in my opinion is also part of the polemic), at any rate, plays the role of an ‘exter-
nal’ mediator in this communication. In other words, it is an important factor through which
a dual contextualisation of the artwork is established. Firstly, as an inherent part of the work,
the text gives Collins’s photographs its primary (for the polemic, initial) context. Later,
through the imposed role of mediator, it accomplishes another contextualisational function
in two directions. On the one hand, it allows the positioning of all the latter texts, which only
in relation to this ‘primary’ contextual function find ‘their own’ context from which they
reflect/speak out. On the other hand it is in this way that the text a posteriori opens a new
channel of communication between ‘The Young Serbs’ on one, and the real life Belgraders on
the other side. All questions that arise from ‘Suspended Adolescence’, in the further course of
the polemic acquire, through the connotation and denotation of the integral elements of its
‘original’ interpretation, a whole line of new, ‘processed’ meanings. Since this is a polemic,
and like every other, it is naturally linear, or more precisely, typified by a certain processual-
ity in the forming of the horizons of meaning, this facilitates the creation of (potentially
indefinite) new designation chains, which in the reverse direction reconsider the primary,
‘original’ context of the artwork, i.e. the work itself. Thus, they actually make it open to the
possibility of continuous repositioning in relation to its assumed intentionality and a possi-
ble primary meaning, i.e. ‘truth’ that might be ascribed to it in this way. As a result, a partic-
uar condition appears within this positively established correlation, which makes any
attempt to ‘grasp’ the essence of ‘The Young Serbs’ at least ambiguous.
It seems that, among all the possible aspects of the polemic, it is this specific segment
that can be singled out as one of its focal points. Without disregard to the importance of the
hyper-polemcal content, which, for the first time after a long period clearly opens some ques-
tions directly implicating the local cultural, political and mental scene, hence this exchange
undoubtedly deserves to be called a polemical conversation (one of the decisive factors for
giving it this name, according to the policy of the Prelom magazine), I tried to indicate one of
its aspects which are not so manifest and can easily be overlooked if too much emphasis is
put on any of its particular polemic content. Namely, as a whole, such an exchange can read-
ily, and from a certain political standpoint even desirably, be acknowledged as a conversa-
tion of its kind (I think it is unnecessary to mention that it was ‘The Young Serbs’ that held
one of the central places at the grand exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art in
Belgrade, titled Conversation). It investigates in a roundabout manner, indirectly, but actual-
ly very directly, the contemporary context of this environment (political, historical, social,
cultural, artistic) in which Collins’s work appears and with which it plays, not by wrapping
up and hiding, but on the contrary, always revealing anew the mechanisms of the politics of
representation in art, i.e. the representation of the political in art. Through an impressive
range of critical opinions of different provenance in every single contribution to the polemic,
through that direct, but certainly not entirely independent exchange of thoughts, opinions,
affects, the idea of conversation takes form. On the other hand, this idea, through the inher-
ent polemical potential of the polemic itself, actually defines itself as a means for the devel-
opment of a form of consensuality, which is lacking in our environment, and which is always
a form and articulation of a certain social/political consensuality. And there lies the signifi-
cance of this exceptional polemic, which by this means, in the most direct possible way con-
firms the idea that ‘art plunged into immediate, or unmediated, human relations’. In other
words, although maybe hyper-polemical on occasions, the authors of the polemic were
brave enough to look into their bucolic, disappointed, deathly, sexy, etc. faces, and try to find
in them directions for a new, relative as much as stable moral. For this they should be con-
gratulated, in each particular case. And, certainly, the artist who induced them to do it.
Vesna Jovanovi}
THE SIXTH
6 HEAD
We should begin with the fact that could only be mentioned, without staying
insignificant: all the participants in the polemic which ensued from the artwork
‘Young Serbs’, the author himself (Phil Collins) and all the photographed people in the
work, know each other quite well. This text is inspired firstly by the numerous verbal
polemics, which took place at the same time as the written discussion, and a series of
situations, which, though often unseen, always lie behind texts.
»SIXTH HEAD OR:

ON »YOUNG SERBS«, FOLLOWING THE POLEMIC INITIATED BY THIS WORK«
Thinking about Collins’s work and reading Relational Aesthetics by Nicholas Bourriaud (an
accidental coincidence), I cannot but notice how the work ‘Young Serbs’ perfectly fits into the
notion of relational art (of the nineties), and how the polemic, following the work (and not
1 ‘A successful work always the text, as I will explain later) is a product of an ‘ideally successful
pertains to something more work of art’1. Furthermore, as Jelena Vesi} notices (in one of her e-mails
than a mere existence in space;
it is open for dialogue, discus-
in connection with the publishing of the polemic) since the work was
sion…’, Nicholas Bourriaud, also shown at the exhibition Conversation in MSUB (Museum of
Relational Aesthetics
Contemporary Art in Belgrade), it perfectly, and surprisingly, corre-
sponds to the idea of conversation of the exhibition’s curator. Therefore, I will quote
Bourriaud once again: ‘Every work of art creates a model of sociability by which reality is
transposed or represented. Thus, before any aesthetic product, the following question may
justly be posed: Does this work provoke dialogue? Can I and how do I exist in the space
defined by this artwork?’ To simplify the matter – Yes, Collins’s work provoked dialogue and
the ‘ones called to account’ obviously don’t feel at ease in the space that is defined by it. But,
what kind of space is defined by this work? This became the focal point of the polemic that
followed, not as an interpretation, but as a product of the work. I think that for this reason,
‘Young Serbs’ deserve additional interpretation.
In the beginning, we should clear up the question of the form and presentation of the
work. Without the intention of referring to the autonomy of the artefact, I think that it is sen-
sible to start with the ‘material’ itself. Collins’s work was made for Source magazine, where
it was originally published as five whole-page photographs with an accompanying text, and
all together with the full title ‘Branislav Dimitrijevi} introduces Phil Collins Portraits of
Young Serbs, Belgrade, 2001.
The work, as we see, comprises five photographs each of which shows the head of a
person lying on the grass and ‘struggling with the sun in their eyes’. Although grass can also
be, and indeed is, some sort of context, in the case of these photographs, it was generally
pointed out that they were portraits of young people removed from a cultural context. This
is not without a reason. Firstly, these photographs, in the form already described in which
they were published, have the title ‘Young Serbs’. This title does not derive from the content,
it was added to the work. It actually explains who these young people looking at us from the
paper are; it was chosen among a series of possible titles for the photographs in question.
Aside form the title, there is the text by Branislav Dimitrijevi}, which further explains the
title of the work, i.e. – what is represented in the work. In that sense, the text ‘Suspended
Adolescence’ is not only an act of interpretation of Collins’s work. It has a dual function
(which is also noted in the text when Dimitrijevi} says that to him as an art historian the
image of a lying Narcissus comes to mind, which means that he is not speaking only as an
art historian). Thus, apart form its interpretative function, the text ‘Suspended Adolescence’,
together with the full title from Source magazine, signifies that cultural context which the
work lacks on first impression, i.e. it also works as an expanded subtitle. The artist chose the
faces that he will photograph, as well as the author of the introductory text and title of his
work. In this way, Dimitrijevi}’s text is something of a ‘sixth photograph from Serbia’, a con-
text which Phil Collins ‘wanted to escape’. And yet, another meaning - which it will acquire
in the context of a ‘spontaneously’ created polemic - will strengthen even more its position
as ‘sixth photograph’, ‘the sixth head cut off’.
Finally, the work ‘Young Serbs’ does not evade context, it provokes it. The work actu-
ally operates in such a way that it provokes what it does not possess. And here the intention
of the author to name it as he did is very important, just as is his choice of the author who
will represent his work through text. To clarify this, I will quote the words of R.. Barthes who,
talking about newspaper photography, says: ‘that from the aspect of purely immanent
analysis, the structure of the photograph is not isolated, it is related to at least one more
structure, i.e. – the text, be it a title, legend or article.’
Further, if we observe the text in view of the contents of the polemic it provoked, we
can even see it as a parody (ironic allusion?) on ‘newspaper photography’, i.e. ‘media repre-
sentation’. Namely, in the last ten or more years, numerous media representations of Serbia
were created. Branislav Dimitrijevi} mentions these in his text. Now, Phil Collins places
‘some’ faces on the grass, calls them ‘Young Serbs’, and at once, these ‘Young Serbs’ called to
account can’t agree which context they were taken out from. They try (as well as the author
of ‘Suspended Adolescence’) to fill in this ‘blank media representation’ which Phil’s work
resembles. Therefore, I will not argue Dimitrijevi}’s interpretation of the work, because, as I
said, it is not only that. In his text, Dimitrijevi} not only interprets the work, he also reacts to
it. Falling into the trap of its functional mechanism, he tries to fill in the empty space which
the work produces, the place where these young faces come from - some of whom will
indeed fall into the trap themselves, and thinking that they are only arguing with other writ-
ings, they will be actually providing true legitimacy to Phil’s work2.
Unfortunately, only on having written this text, I read the one by Branislav
Dimitrijevi} ‘Wittgenstein’s Balls’, in the catalogue for the exhibition Conversations; as well
as the text by Milan Rakita Conversation Piece; I would like to refer to them, as I believe that
they essentially talk about the things that might have been added to those of mine.
2 ‘Thanks to their works’ – talking about

artists whose work is based on relational
aesthetics – ‘onto the scene come out
social relations, interactions with the audi-
ence in the framework of the experience
which it is offered, communicational
processes in their concrete form, as tools,
means of linking individuals and groups of
people’. N. Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics

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Conversation

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© 2002 Copyright by Prelom

[7] Conversation, The polemic on Phil Collins’ Young Serbs

[ 11 ] Branislav Dimitrijevi} Suspended Adolescence

[ 15 ] Aleksandra Sekuli} Defense from the Protection (Re: Suspended Adolescence)

[ 24 ] Slobodan Karamani} Post-traumatic Youth and the Conservation

[ 34 ] Du{an Grlja (De)generation in Protest

[ 45 ] Milan Rakita Conversation Piece

[ 52 ] Vesna Jovanovi} The Sixth Head

nisms of constitution and communicational standards of an intelectual community«) were

»...anyway — here they are — romantic, sexy,

Himself admiring, by himself admired.

THE DEFENSE FROM

(Milo{ Bodnar: »Heads cut off«, 1998.)

AND ME, TOO, ALMOST

THE BEST WAY TO WRITE ABOUT US IS BY USING BODNAR©S POETRY.

Whether it is horrible night,

(Milo{ Bodnar, antic writing, 1997)

THE LAKE, THE SUN

POST-TRAUMATIC YOUTH AND THE

abstract potentiality only in an interaction of character and environment and

NATO’s bombing, Greetings from Belgrade,

tiatives« which fit into a model of »networking« as a dominant organizational form of

INSTEAD OF A PROLOGUE AND SUMMARY

to discern a specific perceptive/communicational logic which, although comprising antago-

THE ADVENTURES OF CONTEXT

»SIXTH HEAD OR:

2 ‘Thanks to their works’ – talking about

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