At a time of the aggressive strengthening of the global right, (pro)fascist, racist, and imperialist policies, while the global left is markedly weak and progressive movements are atomized and fragmented, it is important to return to the revolutionary and emancipatory events in the Yugoslav context (as well as the international developments connected to them), and the social role of cultural and engaged artistic practices in the social struggles of that time from a contemporary perspective. The lecture will examine the relation between theory and practice within the critical left in Yugoslav culture through the analysis and re-reading of various intellectual, cultural, and artistic practices in the period between the two world wars. The presentation will include the interwar period in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a capitalist-monarchist country with an authoritarian system and a society facing growing pro-fascist tendencies as well as the approaching Nazi occupation. It will look at the complex relationships between culture/art – politics – revolution, and the role of numerous cultural and artistic practices in revolutionary struggle, through the analysis of several case studies. In the Yugoslav context, this involves the intersectional intertwining and collaboration of revolutionary student, workers’, women, and artistic movements led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, through the articulation and organization of the politics of the People’s Front.

Vida Knežević is a theoretician and art historian, curator and socially engaged cultural worker. She is a co-founder of Kontekst collective, whose work represents connecting critical theory and practice of artistic production with broader social context. In 2019 she completed her PhD thesis entitled “Theory and Practice of the Critical Left in Yugoslav Culture (Yugoslav Art Between the Two World Wars and the Revolutionary Social Movement)”. She was a lecturer at the College of Fine Arts and Design in Belgrade and the University of Arts in Belgrade. Since 2014 she has been co-founder and co-editor (until 2025) of the educational project and the online magazine Masina.rs.

She is an author, curator and associate at the numerous projects and exhibitions in the field of curatorial, artistic and activist practices such as: Kun: Artist – Worker – Fighter (2024), Realize! Resist! React! Performance and Politics in the 1990s in the Post-Yugoslav Context (2019-2021), We Have Built Cities for You – An Exhibition on the Contradictions of Yugoslav Socialism (2017-2018) and others. She is the winner of the ‘Lazar Trifunović’ Award for 2024, for the author’s text published in the accompanying catalog of the exhibition ‘Kun: Artist-Worker-Fighter’, in the SANU Gallery. She is a member of the Association of Art Critics AICA – Serbian section, and a member of the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS). In the period 2021-2023, she was a President of the Board of Directors of the Association of the Independent Cultural Scene of Serbia (NKSS).