EXHIBITION
Cetinje, capsule April 12 – May 03, 2013
Montenegrin Art Gallery ”Miodrag-Dado ?uri?”
”Unfinished modernisations – between utopia and pragmatism” exhibition represents a two-year research project (2010-2012) which explores the production of the built environment within the social, economic and
cultural context of socialist Yugoslavia and the reflections of these processes in today’s independent states, after the collapse of the former state.
As part of the European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012, the architectural exhibition, ‘Unfinished Modernisations / Between Utopia and Pragmatism’ will be taking place at the Maribor Art Gallery from February 10 – April 22. In Montenegro, it will be showcased at Montenegrin Art Gallery ”Miodrag-Dado Đurić” in Cetinje.
The exhibition’s curators are asserted young experts: Maroje Mrduljaš, responsible editor of the Croatian Magazine for Architecture and Culture Oris; Vladimir Kulić (SR/USA), assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the Florida Atlantic University; Matevž Čelik (SI), director of the Museum of Architecture and Design, and Simona Vidmar, curator at the Maribor Art Gallery.
The leader and launcher of the project is Association of Croatian Architects, in collaboration with the Oris house of architecture (Zagreb), Institute for Contemporary Architecture (Zagreb), Trajekt (Ljubljana), the Fine Arts Gallery (Maribor) the Association of Architects of Belgrade and the Skopje Coalition for Sustainable Development.
With the series of studies, conferences and exhibitions the project illuminates spaces that were created by the “socialist progress” in the former Yugoslavia and thus establishes what has happened with these spaces after the collapse of the common state and the disappearance of socialism. The exhibition focuses on the physical space, e.g. on the production of city or town planning respectively as one of the fundamental means of socialist modernization; and on the role that architecture had in this production.
During socialist Yugoslavia, modernization 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, town 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 town planning practices from the socialist period in relation to the social context from which they arose and define their current image and character.
An exhibition will be opened by lecture of MA Slavica Stamatović Vučković from the Faculty of Architecture Podgorica, named Architecture as a cultural text: objects of culture in Montenegro – urbanity generators. During the exhibition period there will be few more lectures held by:
- Dr Ljiljana Blagojević, visiting professor at Faculty of Architecture University in Belgrade.
- Maroje Mrduljaš, project and exhibition founder.
The exhibition featured in Cetinje will be open until May 5th.
Organizer of the event is National Museum of Montenegro, in cooperation with studio DVARP (Dijana Vucinic Architectural Research and Practice) and architectural web portal REACT.
The project is supported by Ministry of Culture of Montenegro.
Secretary
