Reactivating The Past: Case Study Analysis Of The Non-Museum-Based Yugo-Nostalgic Exhibition In Serbia

With the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia followed by ethnic cleansing, massacres, and the urbicides of large cities, such as Sarajevo, Vukovar or Mostar, the discourse of “brotherhood and unity” was suppressed, andany sense of it being genuine has been lost. The policy of multiculturalism was instantly transformed into a reemerged nationalist policy, and the institutions dealing with there presentation of the memory were reinforced in order to re-define, construct, or at least upgrade the new interpretation of the recent pastfrom the new national perspectives. Since the fall of the Miloševićregime, the politics of memory has been transformed into new sets of visual representations. One of them is the Yugo-nostalgic competing discourse that was visualized recently through a temporary exhibition based on a private initiative. In this article, the contemporary image ofthe given type of nostalgia through case study research of a Yugonostalgi cexhibition, which took place in Belgrade from October 2013 to January to 2014 is analyzed. The main elements, events andpersonalities that were selected for construction of the newly actualized trend are recounted.