Sounding Spomenik, site-specific performances at architectural masterpieces of brutalist and modernist anti-fascist monuments scattered across ex-Yugoslavia, on this occasion we are visiting monumental pieces by the great Bogdan Bogdanović. July 2024, sites of Popina and Čačak memorial, with musicians Manja Ristić and Milana Zarić.
Co-production with Ensemble Studio 6, supported by the Culture Moves Europe Residency Program.
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| ph courtesy by Arna Mackic |
"While the stunning, still enigmatic visuality of the abstract brutalist monuments of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been well documented in recent years, we know almost nothing about their sound aspects. Most of these monuments (the original plural form spomenici, which in Serbo-Croatian and Slovene means monuments, comes from the root spomen-, which means memory) have hollow parts that serve as resonance spaces. The most typical materials from which these historical artifacts are made are concrete pouring and rebar or steel framework with metal cover plates. Materials that definitely affect sounds or have audible properties that change them. It is interesting that until now no one has studied, thoroughly documented and published these permanent landscape structures as acoustic spaces. Beyond the immediate sonic aspects of monuments, little is known about their surrounding acoustic environments. Most of these unique and individual monuments were built in remote rural locations, usually far from any urbanization, but some were placed in city centers or suburbs or near villages - all of which presuppose a very diverse sound environment.
However, the monuments functioned - and some still function - as monuments to the Second World War with a clear anti-fascist connotation, and from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1970s as the foundation and materialized symbols of Josip Broz Tito's utopian idea of a strong and united Yugoslav state with the high-pitched slogan ' brotherhood and unity'; these abstract but undeniably iconic modernist constructions are treated purely as architectural works of art. All possible political and ideological layers aside, it is not our job to judge whether these monuments are useless politicized remnants of the former Yugoslavia's communist past or important historical artifacts still to be admired.
In addition to the fascinating brutalist architecture, we are interested in the sounds. KUD Mreža, ON Rizom Institute, and the sub-publishing label Inexhaustible Editions - Edicija FriForma started a long-term research, exhibition, recording, and publishing project in 2021, with which we research and reveal the sound attributes of the monuments of the former Yugoslavia (those that are now found in Slovenia, Croatia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and North Macedonia) by engaging local instrumentalists - mostly young, extremely talented professional musicians who work locally or internationally in the field of free improvised or contemporary composed music, to find the most responsive or fascinating sounding parts of the monuments on the spot while playing a musical instrument. In addition to intentional sounds produced by musical instruments, by recording the environment, we also document unintentional sounds from the immediate surroundings. We plan to visit at least three monuments each year, study and reflect on them through field trips, photography, audio and video recordings, and eventually audio publications. So far, we have collected more than twenty locations with emblematic monuments that are important for our Sounding Monument project." - László Juhász, April 2021.