Unfinished Modernisations
Mostra. Ljubljana, Museum of Architecture and Design
Unfinished
Modernisations: Between Utopia and Pragmatism
12/3/-3/31/2013
The presentation
of architectural and large-scale urban planning projects which mark the period
of (socialist) Yugoslavia focuses on the milestones and visions of the
(unfinished) modernisations of cities during socialism as well as answer the
questions about their role and legacy in the successor countries. The
Unfinished Modernisations show spaces created by the "socialist
progress" in the former Yugoslavia and determine what happend to these
areas after the collapse of the common state and abolition of socialism.The
exhibition focuses on the physical space, e.g. on the production of city respectively
as one of the fundamental means of socialist modernisation; and on the role
that architecture had played in this production. However the exhibition also
interferes with symbolic spaces in which this production unfolded, such as
geopolitical, cultural, economic and ideological spaces.
During socialist
Yugoslavia, modernisation was presented unilaterally like an everyday
collective achievement that should reveal the progress of workers'
self-management and make people feel proud of it. The life of Yugoslavs was
thus marked by megalomaniacal, almost utopian projects in the fields of
industry, energetics, traffic logistics, urban planning. On the other hand,
today this socialist utopianism is often a synonym for or taken as the
"original sin" of unsuitable economic structures, ecological problems
and social conflicts. This project will review and present characteristic
architectural and urban planning practices from the socialist period in
relation to the social context from which they arose and define their current
image and character. The collective works of young researchers from Croatia,
Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia at the
exhibition are considered as one of the similar projects that put the
established history of world architecture in the new light and challange the
uniformed belief about the period of urban modernisation in former Yugoslavia.
The exhibition
presents numerous architectural projects, ranging from tourist experiments on
the Adriatic coastline, concepts for new cities and presentation pavilions at
international exhibitions, to notorious public edifices and historical
memorials in all the former Yugoslav republics starting with the communist
takeover in 1945 to the collapse of the Socialist Federative Republic of
Yugoslavia in 1991. Through a new approach and audaciousness brought by the
timely and political side step from modern history, it is the purpose of the
project to re-examine the socialist architectural legacy of Yugoslavia and to
awaken the strong and productive connections that are present at every step in
the urban space of the former common state. The project is a result of a
two-year collaboration, in which MAO has been cooperating as one of the
partners, together with Maribor Art Gallery (SLO), UHA/Croatian Architects'
Association (CRO), DAB/Association of Belgrade Architects (SR), KOR/Coalition
for Sustainable Development (MK) and Hiša Oris (CRO).
Curators: Maroje
Mrduljaš (HR), Vladimir Kulić (SR/USA)
Cor-curators:
Matevž Čelik (SI), Antun Sevšek (CRO), Simona Vidmar (SI)