Making Sense of Ruins: Architectural Reconstruction and Collective Memory in Belgrade

Bădescu, Gruia

doi:10.1017/nps.2018.42

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…The historical record produced by trials has been used by political propagandists to further the view of one-sided victimisation (see Haider, 2016). Political actors have also produced a divisive memorial landscape, blocked the development of official national truth commissions, and undermined support for the region-wide truth commission, RECOM (Bãdescu, 2019a and2019b;Clark 2016;Dragović-Soso, 2016). Public authorities have given little support to grassroots projects (e.g.…”

Section: Challenges In Designing and Implementing Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Memorialisation can be instrumentalised, however. Political actors and institutions can influence how collective memories are expressed in the built environment by selecting what to commemorate or ignore, including which memorials to build or which heritage buildings to renovate (Bãdescu, 2019a and2019b;Clark 2016).…”

Section: Memorialisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Serbia, there are a number of emblematic buildings in Belgrade that remain in ruins after the 1999 NATO bombings (Bãdescu, 2019b). The ruined Generalštab (former General Staff of the Yugoslav Army and the Ministry of Defense of Yugoslavia), for example, is the subject of much debate, with suggestions for the memorialisation of the ruins on the one hand, and a lucrative new construction on the other (Bãdescu, 2019b). Its fate may be determined by capital and allegiances rather than memory (Bãdescu, 2019b).…”

Section: Cultural Heritage and The Built Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in the Western Balkans: Approaches, Impacts and Challenges

Haider¹

2021

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Countries in the Western Balkans have engaged in various transitional justice and reconciliation initiatives to address the legacy of the wars of the 1990s and the deep political and societal divisions that persist. There is growing consensus among scholars and practitioners that in order to foster meaningful change, transitional justice must extend beyond trials (the dominant international mechanism in the region) and be more firmly anchored in affected communities with alternative sites, safe spaces, and modes of engagement. This rapid literature review presents a sample of initiatives, spanning a range of sectors and fields – truth-telling, art and culture, memorialisation, dialogue and education – that have achieved a level of success in contributing to processes of reconciliation, most frequently at the community level. It draws primarily from recent studies, published in the past five years. Much of the literature available centres on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), with some examples also drawn from Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia.

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Section: Challenges In Designing and Implementing Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Memorialisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cultural Heritage and The Built Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in the Western Balkans: Approaches, Impacts and Challenges

Haider¹

2021

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“…Over the course of the past decade, scholars in increasing numbers have studied memory practices related to the reuse of such artifacts (Bădescu, 2019;Elżanowski, 2018), in particular, along the division between politics and the political. "Politics," which refers to the institutionalized order and state-related administration of common goods (such as heritage), is in opposition to the "political," which stresses conflicts, controversy, and dissent in society.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Cultural Values out of Urban Ruins: Re-enactments of Atmospheres

Göbel

2021

Space and Culture

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This article calls for a consideration of the reuse aesthetics of urban ruins in terms of cultural valuations related to the political status of social practices. In the context of debates on ruins in the field of memory studies and along the division between politics and the political, I argue for the recognition of affective atmospheric practices based upon performative knowledge-making and reenactments of atmospheres from the past. As demonstrated by an example of reuse in Berlin in the 2000s, these practices recall rituals and routines from the pasts of ruins by performatively exploring their futures. This position will be critically situated within the debate about “socially engaged arts” and the neoliberal “creative city” policies in the city of Berlin. It will also be presented as a cultural value-making in conflict with the paradigm of historical reconstruction in architecture and planning aimed at creating architectural replications from the archive. The article concludes with a reflection on reenactments as cultural value-making, a perspective that may have an effect on heritage policies.

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“…This is surprising, for there is a vibrant body of research analysing human and political agency in building infrastructure (Humphrey, 2003; Amin, 2014; Harvey and Knox, 2015) and maintaining it (Dalakoglou, 2012; Barnes, 2017; Carse, 2017). Apart from instances of war or destruction (Moshenska, 2015; Bădescu, 2019), however, the political agency behind ruination is generally understudied (see Thornton, 2010 for a notable exception). The aim of this article is thus to critique how Soviet ruins are imagined as archaeological relics of a long‐gone polity by examining the more recent political processes generating infrastructural obsolescence long after the Soviet collapse.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Making of Post‐Post‐Soviet Ruins: Infrastructure Development and Disintegration in Contemporary Russia

Bennett¹

2020

Int. J. Urban Reg. Res.

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Western journalists and photographers fetishize the infrastructural ruination of the former Soviet Union. While sites like abandoned railway stations are assumed to be artefacts of the country's collapse in 1991, many of these ruins are actually products of contemporary Russian state policies. This article critiques the way in which Soviet ruins are imagined as archaeological relics of a long‐gone polity by examining the recent political processes that have generated infrastructural obsolescence long after the Soviet collapse. In pursuit of this aim, I draw on an analysis of texts and imagery depicting Soviet ruins and ethnographic fieldwork and observations in the Russian North and Far East. Specifically, I examine infrastructural construction and ruination in Vladivostok, where the federal government spearheaded a multibillion‐dollar megaproject in advance of the 2012 Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit for which four new bridges were built. Residents of Podnozhye, a community located on an island to which one of the bridges extends, assert that its construction caused the discontinuation of their ferry service to Vladivostok, which consequently rendered infrastructure and amenities along the waterfront obsolete. This dynamic indicates that while ruins often denote the reversal of development, development itself can prompt decay and disintegration, too.

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Making Sense of Ruins: Architectural Reconstruction and Collective Memory in Belgrade

Cited by 20 publications

References 56 publications

Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in the Western Balkans: Approaches, Impacts and Challenges

Transitional Justice and Reconciliation in the Western Balkans: Approaches, Impacts and Challenges

Making Cultural Values out of Urban Ruins: Re-enactments of Atmospheres

The Making of Post‐Post‐Soviet Ruins: Infrastructure Development and Disintegration in Contemporary Russia

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