Shaping Revolutionary Memory – Book Presentation and Discussion in Madrid and Barcelona

A year after publication, Horvatinčić and Žerovc – the editors and two of the authors of the book Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia – reflect on their book project and discuss some of the broader questions about the past and future of monuments (and public art) which are suggested by the Yugoslav case. The discussion will also touch on the challenges involved in researching such politically charged topics, the most important lessons they learned in the process of making the book, and questions they would have liked to address but were unable to do so.

The publication presents a comprehensive study of monuments commemorating Yugoslavia’s antifascist People's Liberation Struggle during the Second World War and socialist revolution, erected in the period 1945 to 1991. In its in-depth interdisciplinary approach, the book embraces the wide-ranging diversity and complex context of Yugoslav monument making, including its inherent contradictions. Moving beyond purely aesthetic considerations and aware of the elusiveness of the messages originally inscribed in these works, it also examines the various modalities in which monuments in general operate as a medium.

About the speakers

Sanja Horvatinčić is a Research Associate at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, where she is currently, among others, part of the project NAM Globe_EXCHANGE: Models and Practices of Global Cultural Exchange and Non-aligned Movement. Her research focuses on the production of monuments and remembrance culture in socialist Yugoslavia, as well as on heritage and memory politics in the post-socialist context.

Beti Žerovc is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her areas of research are visual art and the art system since the mid-nineteenth century, with a focus on their roles in society. She is the author of several books, including When Attitudes Become the Norm: The Contemporary Curator and Institutional Art (2015, reprinted in 2018) and co-editor of the On the Brink: The Visual Arts in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–1941) (2019).

About the moderators

Daniel Palacios González is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the National University of Distance Education (UNED) in Madrid, and was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He holds a PhD in art history from the University of Cologne, where he was an MSCA Fellow. He is the author of Making Monuments from Mass Graves in Contemporary Spain (2024) and De fosas comunes a lugares de memoria (2022), which received the Memory Studies Association First Book Award in 2023. He is a member of the research project NECROPOL at the University of Barcelona.

Queralt Solé i Barjau is a Lecturer at the University of Barcelona. Her areas of research are the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of General Franco, especially as they relate to repression, exile, and memory. She was head of the mass graves unit of the Democratic Memorial of Catalonia, and is the author of the following books: 30 anys d'història d'europeisme català (1999), A les presons de Franco (Proa, 2004), Catalunya 1939: l'última derrota (2006), and Fosses comunes i simbologia franquista (2009). She leads the research project NECROPOL at the University of Barcelona.

The book is published by the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory (Ljubljana) and Archive Books (Berlin).

The events in Madrid and Barcelona are organized by the Library of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Complutense University of Madrid; Department of Art History UNED in Madrid; and Department of Contemporary and Current History, University of Barcelona.

The events are supported by the Igor Zabel Association, Erste Foundation, and by the research project of the Institute of Art History in Zagreb »Digital network, spatial and (con)textual analysis of artistic phenomena and heritage of the 20th century (DIGitART, 2023–2027)« funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.