A Slow Burning Fire

Yugoslavia's diverse and interconnected art scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s, linked to the country's experience with socialist self-management.

In Yugoslavia from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, state-supported Student Cultural Centers became incubators for new art. This era's conceptual and performance art--known as Yugoslavia's New Art Practice--emerged from a network of diverse and densely interconnected art scenes that nurtured the early work of Marina Abramović, Sanja Iveković, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), and others. In this book, Marko Ilić offers the first comprehensive examination of the New Art Practice, linking it to Yugoslavia's experience with socialist self-management and the political upheavals of the 1980s.Introduction
Chapter One. A Draft Decree on the Democratisation of Art
Chapter Two. A Taster of Political Insult
Chapter Three. The International Strike of Artists
Chapter Four. Artists at Work
Chapter Five. What is the Alternative?
Chapter Six. The Miracle of Miracles
Conclusion“Civil war tore Yugoslavia apart and shattered its vibrant and distinct art world. Marko Ilić’s deeply researched and insightful study reconstructs it brilliantly.”
—David Crowley, professor at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, cocurator of Notes from the Underground: Art and Alternative Music in Eastern Europe 1968–1994
 
“Marko Ilić’s book contributes a great deal to a better understanding of Yugoslav New Art Practice as an artistic proposal for more, rather than less, of the self-management form of socialism.”
—Zdenka Badovinac, director, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, and author of Comradeship: Curating, Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist EuropeMarko Ilić is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies.