Contemporary Art and the Culture of Fear in the Post-Yugoslav Context

• In Event: Transnational Dialogs and the Trauma of Globalization in Post-Yugoslav Film, Performance, and Literature

Abstract

The global culture of fear is manifested by distinctive need to cover up fear and numerous social and art practices play role in the game of covering up fear at all costs. In the cultural production of post-Yugoslav space, still marked by strong post-traumatic war syndrome - Agamben”s image of "bare life" is opposed to the megalomaniac social projects that are intended both to deny the image of bare life as a picture of the future of the region and to renew faith in gathered future of the region which should be paradoxically deprived of any fear. In this context, we will examine three works of contemporary art concerning the understanding of fear and the politics of mourning in the post-Yugoslav context: Marina Abramovic's performance Balkan Baroque, film Grbavica by Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic, and novel Fear and His Servant by Serbian writer Marija Novakovic. These works, characterized by powerful female authorship signature and alternative reading of the dominant power -gender regime within the social context of former Yugoslavia, deals with the culture of fear as essential for understanding the post-Yugoslav space/project which, on the one hand, is permeated with fear for its own survival, and on the other, inspired by utopian faith in future of gathered life without fear.

Author

• Tatjana Rosic Ilic, Singidunum U (Serbia)