Understanding Intermedial Quoting: Architecture of Yugoslav Modernism as Quotation within Contemporary Art by Sonja Jankov examines and problematizes the use of Yugoslav modernist architecture as a cultural text in contemporary art practices. Drawing on post-structuralist theory and, more specifically, theories of intertextuality, the author considers the conditions for a diachronic approach to architecture as a signifier of the social and political context of Yugoslav socialism. By analyzing works by contemporary artists that quote the architecture of Yugoslav modernism, the book offers a framework for understanding these intermedial interpretive practices, through which Yugoslav material culture is opened up to new readings.

How do we, from our own historical perspective, approach these practices of semiotic performance and the “free play of signifiers”? To what extent does the multiplication of quotations of Yugoslav modernist architecture abstract these traces of material culture from the conditions of their historical production? At what point in this abstraction does interpretation end and creative agency begin? In other words, how does intermedial quotation transform the “signified” of architecture as the heritage of Yugoslav modernism? Finally, concerning the discursive shifts it produces, how do we understand quotation as a political act? These are some of the questions to be addressed in the seminar.

Participants:

• Sonja Jankov, PhD, author of the book
• Nikola Dedić, PhD, Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade
• Lana Stojićević, Arts Academy in Split
• Vladimir Kulić, PhD, College of Design, Iowa State University

Moderator:
Marko Ristić, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade