Figure 3. Renovation of monuments to fallen combatants and the victims of the fascist reign of terror in Veljujn, 2017. Photograph: Tatjana Vlačić Vujučić.

Figure 4. Igor Grubić, in collaboration with Documenta, public action, 2011

practice aimed at the activation and public problematising of the attitude to the socialist inheritance. Independent curatorial initiatives were among the first actors on the cultural scene that through campaigns, actions, exhibitions, public events and appeals systematically dealt with the issue of post-socialist societal amnesia. On the other hand, the work of numbers  of NGOs like Documenta and independent initiatives, like the project for the Dotršćina Virtual Museum and a number of activities that are part of the Ars Publica project often in their work come into contact with the renovation of monuments and draw attention to the wider problems of the wiping of social memory. Ten years after the pioneering work of Siniša Labrović entitled Bandaging the Wounded done in 2000 on the Monument to Fallen Combatants and Victims of Fascism in the central part in Sinj that had been several times damaged in an explosion, the multimedia artist Igor Grubić in association with Documenta, by repairing the shattered Zagreb memorial plaque with a paper replica, through the performative act of renovation, put into the public space of the city one more time the possibility of the rehabilitation of its original meaning, showing the power of the individual gesture that in conditions of administrative inertia and apathy sends out a clear political message.[29] (Figure 4). A similar example of a performative collective work on the renovation and cleaning of a monument of the PLW is to be found in the public art actions of the international group Eimigrative Art, which have been organised on Vis Island since 2012. In June 2014, as part of a series of ancillary activities of this collective and members of the Phd in One Night project, including the French philosopher Jacques Rancière organised the cleaning of a monument in the village of Podšpilje, the work of Neven Šegvić of 1964, By the direct engagement of the individuals gathered together, the surface of the stone slab of the monument inscribed with the names of Vis people who were killed in the war against fascism during World War II was scrubbed with brushes.[30] (Title photo). The action went beyond the mere physical renovation of the monument; inherent in it is the idea of restoring the legitimacy of the monument as object of memory and place that brought together the interested participants, recalling thereby the lost function of the monument as place of cohesion and social and political engagement.

The digital reproduction of memory

Along with the strategies of action in public space and the adoption of an active and critical position to the ruling coordinates of official policies of remembering and forgetting described, one should also refer to the strategies of action and production of meaning in the virtual domain. A process that we can call the digital reproduction of memory of the period of socialism – which we look at here only through the example of the collection and dissemination of information and images of monuments – assumes very much greater social influence, getting out of the symbolic and bypassing the demands of political and economic factors that dictate classic forms of cultural production.

Recent interpretations in the field of the theory of social memory see the essence of cultural/social memory in the ways in which it is transmitted via the media, that is, in the media externalisation of our common images of the past, in which memory is transmitted within a society. The more present and efficacious a medium is in transmitting information, the greater will be the range and complexity of societal memory. [31] Just as in its beginnings every form of notating, whether oral in the form of rhythmical memory, textual or visual, started off from the basic need to preserve memory, so contemporary media, which provide far wider capacities, like multimediality, large storage capacity and instant searches and data transmission, in essence serve the same urge. The basic difference, however, lies in the fact that in the development and every wider accessibility of digital media, the interpretive authority with reference to the creation, preservation or deletion of social memory shifts from institutional bodies (archives, state governments, educational system) to the domain of the individual.[32] The consequences of these process, however, are numerous and hard to predict. One of the symptoms of non-centralised and non-hierarchical knowledge and of the huge networking of Internet users is the popular virtual galleries that with their arbitrary and heterogeneous structure bear some resemblance to contemporary “cabinets of wonders”. [33] This change in the order of things opens up a number of practical and ethical problems, from the manipulation of the distributed content to the relativisation of facts and the arbitrary interpretations of them, their popularity and reception, it seems, being to a great extent dependent on the perceived weirdness of the disseminated visual contents. Finally, the mass distribution of visual material is subject to various kinds of transformation and manipulation, because of which very soon not a single photograph on the Internet will no longer be able or no longer have to represent an authentic document of the past. [34] The effect of making strange is to a great extent responsible for the fact that monuments from the series of twenty six photographs of Yugoslav monuments by the Belgian photographer Jan Kempenaers[35] were placed on the shelves of numerous virtual cabinets of wonders. Although as a war photographer in Sarajevo he became acquainted with the meaning and historical context of the structures photographed, he was interested primarily in “creating interesting images. I photographed just those that I liked, which had an interesting shape”.[36] The photographs of  the monuments in the book are classified numerically – monument #1 – monument #26) with meagre information being provided about the microlocation and the year of production of an individual photograph. The names of the monuments, who made them and the year they were created were totally missing, as was their clear location, since some place names are not marked on maps. Since a preview of the book was accessible on art web sites for some time, photographs and parts of the text soon began to be disseminated and modified according to the profile of the sites and blogs that transmitted them. The loan word spomenik [monument] that the author retained in the title of the book and in the description of the structures photographed in the process of virtual dissemination was semantically attenuated and redefined: judging from the frequency of the same photographs that we get from an internet search mechanism asking for “spomenik” the word in the virtual linguistic corpus was narrowed into a signifier of a particular monumental type of the 1950s and 1970s in the area of the former Yugoslavia. An analysis of articles and reportages that contain the term spomenik conducted on a body of sixty internet sources confirms the proposition that the Internet, apart from its potential for the pluralisation and democratisation of societal memory at the same time empowers cultural ideas about the ideologically and culturally heterogeneous geopolitical space of post-socialist Europe. In line with the numerical cataloguing, which resembles colonial documentary photography or the taxonomy of unknown plant species, their origin, meaning and message is at once mystified and depoliticised; in the further uncontrolled distribution of images the monuments photographed were often completely decontextualised and even pronounced photo-montages. The series of photographs is visually united by bland neutral lighting with the central motifs of monumental buildings in a deserted landscape, without a human figure to give the observer any feeling of a cultural space and a temporal orientation. The fate of all of the structures in the rounded series of photographs is brought down to an assumed self-intelligible oblivion, negligence and decay, irrespective of some of them, like that on the site of the former concentration camp of Jasenovac or the monument to the Battle of Kozara, still functioning as active and maintained sites of memory, or that others, like the damaged monument at the memorial area of Bijeli Potoci-Kamensko, have been in the meantime completely destroyed. This study of cases, however, at the same time reveals a much more important problem of self-perception, tellingly described in the analysis of post-socialist societies by Buden referred to above: “Eastern Europe after 1989 is like a landscape filled with historical ruins and inhabited by children, or immature people incapable of organising their lives democratically without other people’s help. They do not see themselves as either subjects or the creators of the democracy that they have themselves won and that they themselves created.” [37] In other words, in the perception from the west we would not see any problem if there were not a profound schizophrenic cleavage in our own conception of monuments as symbols of an alternative social system, caused by the impossibility of the dominant ideology facing up to the risk of accepting the positive inheritance of the People’s Liberation War and the socialist social system. To the extent that formal protection assumes a more thoroughgoing historical revision of their credibility and the wiping of those layers of meaning that do not suit the preferred ethno-national narrative or the management of the heritage in the market logic of neoliberalism, it seems that it is illusory to expect them to be rehabilitated into authentic sites of memory. It is equally problematic to construct protection criteria on the basis of ruinophile, exoticising projects from the west, whose emptying of the monuments of their abstract symbolism seems perfectly to correspond to the prevailing ideology. However, both these mechanisms come up on the continuity and proliferation of resistance strategies in both the public and in the virtual space, increasingly frequently with the synergy of the two considered as media. Reaction and inheriting bottom up continues on the transitional series of battles for public space, free education, welfare policy and is achieved by the organisation of symbolic and real campaigns for the renovation of monuments and the active reflection on their future, reliance on the digital preservation of systematically destroyed or hardly accessible written sources or the use of monuments of the PLW as symbols of contemporary visual art in Croatia.

[1] Rastko Močnik, Koliko fašizma? [How Much Fascism?], Arkzin d.o.o., Zagreb, 1998/1999, p. 26.

[2] In Portugal, for example, between the Descolonizando group and the extreme rightist groups there are repeated conflicts about monuments dedicated to the Portuguese diplomat and missionary AntóniiVieira (1608–1697): Nicolau Ferreira, Manuel Louro, “Estátua do padre António Vieira guardada por ‘neonazis’”, Público, 5.10.2017,https://www.publico.pt/2017/10/05/

sociedade/noticia/accao-de-protesto-contra-a-estatua-do-padre-antonio-vieira-barrada-por-neonazis-1787874 (accessed 8.10.2018.); Ana Yekenha Ernesto, “Extrema-direita impede manifestação contra estátua do padre António Vieira em Lisboa”, Diário de Notícias, 6.10.2017. https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/interior/extrema-direita-impedemanifestacao-contra-estatuado-padre-antonio-vieira-em-lisboa-8823551.html (accessed 8.10.2018.).

[3] Ante Lešaja, Knjigocid: Uništavanje knjiga u Hrvatskoj 1990-ih [Bookocide: the destruction of books in Croatia in the 1990s], Profil and Srpsko narodno vijeće, Zagreb, 2012, p. 48.

[4] The most satisfactory proposal to date for a collective description of these phenomena can be found in the term mnemocide first used by Jan Assman in the book Commemorative Spaces: Forms and Changes of Cultural Memory (C. H. Beck, Munich, 1999.). The concept has recently been introduced into the Yugoslav post-socialist context, defined as the “systematic description of memory of a given social grouping”, implying the concepts of culturecide and heritocide.  See: Marko Sjekavica, “Sustavno uništavanje baštine – prema pojmu kulturocida/heritocida [Systematic destruction of the heritage – towards the concept culturecide / heritocide]”, Informatica Museologica, Vol. 43, No. 1–4, 2013, pp. 57–75.

[5] It is worth referring to the study of Dario Gamboni that deals, among other things, with the demolition of communist monuments in the lands of the former East.  Earthed in the givens of the bipolar construct of the Cold War ideological division, the conclusions indicate the synchronic drawbacks and traps.

[6] “Resolution of the Council of Europe 1481 on the need for international condemnation of the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes” published on January 25, 200t, in Strasbourge by the  parliament of the Council of Europe; http://www. pravnadatoteka.hr/pdf/aktualno/Rezolucija%20Vije%C4%87a%20Europe%201481.pdf (9.9.2015.). See: Stigma totalitarizma – antitotalitarni diskurs u funkciji diskreditacije levice [The stigma of totalitarianism – antitotalitarian discourse used in order to discredit the left], AKO, Novi Sad, 2014.

[7] 7 Maya Nadkarni, “The Death of Socialism and the Afterlife of its Monuments: Making and Marketing the Past in Budapest’s Statue Park Museum”, in: Contested Pasts. The Politics of Memory, Katherine Hodgkin, Susannah Radstone (eds.), Routledge, London, 2003, p. 199.

[8] See for example an interview with historian Mario Jareb: “Smještaj NOB-a u muzeje prikladan je i civiliziran način [Accommodation of the PLW in museums is an appropriate and civilised manner]” , Glas Slavonije, August 26, 2017, http://www.glas-slavonije.hr/341407/11/ Smjestaj-NOB-a-u-muzeje-prikladan-je-i-civiliziran-nacin (accessed: 22.10.2018.).

[9] Vanessa Čokl, “Spemova anketa o usodi spomenikov NOB in revolucije. Večina je proti odstranitvi [SPREM poll about condemnation of monuments of the PLW and the revolution. Most against removal]”, Večer, no. 206, 6.11.1996, p. 20.

[10] It is striking how under-represented empirical research into what is called post-socialist iconoclasm is in Croatia, as in other former socialist countries.

[11] Među karakterističnim pristupima zalaganja za očuvanje samo onih spomenika koji sadrže „umjetničku vrijednost“ izdvaja se dokumentarni film Bogdana Žižića Damnatio memoriae (2000, ‘46 min.). Za primjer otvorenog zalaganja za uklanjanje ili daljnje propadanje spomenka, koji dolazi iz stručno-akademskih redova, vidi: Ana Munk, „Klub ljubitelja spomenika NOB-a“, Vijenac, br. 521, 2014, http://www.matica.hr/vijenac/521/Klub%20ljubitelja%20spomenika%20NOB-a/ (pristupljeno: 8.10.2018.) Among  the characteristic approaches advocating the preservation of only those monuments that have “artistic value” is the documentary of Bogdan Žižić Damnatio memoriae (2000, 46 min). For an example of blatant support for the removal of monuments or allowing them to continue deteriorating coming from the ranks of professionals and academics, see Ana Munk “Klub ljubitelja spomenika NOB-a [PLW monuments lovers club]”, Vijenac, no. 521, 201, http://www.matica.hr/vijenac/521/Klub%20ljubitelja%20spomenika%20NOB-a/ (accessed: 8.10.2018.)

[12] See for example: Ive Šimat-Banov, Hrvatsko kiparstvo od 1950. do danas [Croatian sculpture since 1950], Ljevak, Zagreb, 2013, pp. 681-703

[13] Juraj Hrženjak (ed.), Rušenje antifašističkih spomenika u Hrvatskoj: 1990–2000 [Demolition of anti-fascist monuments in Croatia: 1990-2000], Savez antifašističkih boraca Hrvatske, Zagreb, 2002.

[14] Since not all plaques and busts formed part of the analysis, and bearing in mind that this type of emblem was numerically preponderant, these statistics are not complete, and the percentage of all the memorials destroyed or removed is much greater.

[15] A spatial presentation of the geographical distribution of the current state and degree of damage done to monuments in Croatia is accessible here: https://public.tableau.com/views/spomenici-stanje-FIN/Sheet3?:embed=y&:display_count=yes. Sanja Horvatinčić, “Spomenici iz razdoblja socijalizma u Hrvatskoj – prijedlog tipologije” (doctoral dissertation), Sveučilište u Zadru, Zadar, p. 140.

[16] See for example: Abram Maružin, Miho Rojnić, Spomenici govore. Katalog spomeničkih obilježja, poginulih boraca i žrtava fašističkog terora na Puljštini u Drugom svjetskom ratu [Monuments speak. Catalogue of monumental emblems of fallen combatants and victims of the fascist reign of terror in the Pula area in World War II], UABH grada Pule, Pula, 2004

[17] Numerous newspaper reports tell of the process that unfolded with direct political and military interventions in local communities. See for example : Drago Hedl, “Smetlari kao restauratori. Kako se i zašto osječki UNIKOM počeo baviti skidanjem spomen-obilježja antifašističke borbe [Dustmen as restorers. How and why the Osijek UNIKOM started going in for the removal of memorial emblems of the AF war]”, Slobodna Dalmacija, 25.10.1992, p. 8; M. Jerinić, “Vandalski čin pod Revelinom. Miniran partizanski Spomenik [Act of Vandalism at Revelin {Dubrovnik}. Partisan monument blown up]”, Slobodna Dalmacija, 26.11.1992, p. 10; Ž. Juras, “Neprihvatljiv čin [Unacceptable act]”, Slobodna Dalmacija, 20.9.1996, p. 8; Blažo Davidović, “’Grobari’ iz mraka [Gravediggers from the dark]”, Slobodna Dalmacija, 19.7.1991, p. 12; A. Dragičević, “Gradac: Srušen spomenik. Obračun boraca HV sa simbolima komunizma [Gradac, toppled monument. Cro Army shoot-out with symbolism of communism]”, Slobodna Dalmacija, 24.2.1992. n.p.; D.C., “Tko je rušio spomenike borcima NOB-a [Who ruined memorials to PLW combatants]”, Novi list, 24.6.1998, n.p.

[18] At an exhibition entitled The Sixties (Museum of Arts and Crafts, 2018), monuments were presented primarily as aesthetic phenomena, and their devastation was passed over in total silence, as was the issue of the political circumstances of and responsibility for the destruction.  In such examples too it is suggested that these are really the consequences of spontaneous processes or natural disasters.

[19] See: Boris Buden, “Children of Postcommunism”, Radical Philosophy, No. 159, Jan/Feb 2010, pp. 18–25. 20

[20] Ibid.

[21] Among recent examples, we pick out the exhibition  “Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980” held in MoMA in New York in 2018.

[22] For the most complete critical analysis of this phenomenon to date, see: Vladimir Kulić, “Orientalizing Socialism: Architecture, Media, and the Representations of Eastern Europe”, Architectural Histories, 6(1): 7, pp. 1–6, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.273

[23] An advertising campaign for sunglasses by the Australian brand Valley Eyewear was shot in the protectged Jasenovac Memorial Area and distributed in June and July 2018. After sharp reactions from Croatia, the case received global publicity and the video was withdrawn from circulation. See, for example: Darko Janjević, “Australian Valley Eyewear firm shoots ad at Jasenovac death camp”, Deutsche Welle, 3.7.2018, https://www.dw.com/en/australianvalley-eyewear-firm-shoots-ad-at-jasenovac-death-camp/a-44513768 (accessed: 23.10.2018.)

[24] In the first case we refer to an event from Iž island from the early 1990s, when a monument made by the sculptor Velimor Mačukatin in 1949 was raised from the sea by the members of the local population. The second case includes the organised transport of blown-up monuments to fallen combatants and victims of fascism from Brođanac bz Osijek intot he private hard of the conservator Drago Kretić. The monument was later transferred to the yard of the Modern Gallery in Osijek where, where, inappropriately kept on the ground and exposed to the weather, it is still decaying. See: Drago Hedl, “Ne tuguj, brončana stražo![Don’t be sad, bronze watch]”, Feral Tribune, 28.10.2000, e.g.;Bogdan Žižić: Damnatio memoriae, 2000, ‘46 min.

[25] For examples of actions of this kind see: “Čišćenje okoliša oko spomenika Radi Končaru i drugovima [Cleaning the environs of the monument to Rade Končar and comrades]”, Fališ: Festival alternative i ljevice Šibenik, 6.9.2014. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.328596187322836.1073741840.182381795277610&type=3 (pristupljeno 8.10.2018.); Iva Martinović, “Zajednička akcija antifašista regije: Ne grafitima mržnje [Joint action of antifascists of the region: No to graffiti of hatred]”, Slobodna Evropa, 25.6.2015, http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/content/ujedinjeni-antifasisti-regije/27092100.html (accessed 8.10.2018.)

[26] Damir Pilić, “Otkriva se obnovljeni antifašistički spomenik miniran 1992. godine [Unveiled restored antifascist monument blown up in 1992]”, Slobodna Dalmacija, 21.5.2015. http://www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/Split-%C5%BEupanija/tabid/76/ articleType/ArticleView/articleId/286287/Default.aspx (accessed 8.10.2018.)

[27] See: (Editorial), “Tko to tamo obnavlja spomenike? Pojedinci i lokalne zajednice samoinicijativno obnavljaju spomenike žrtvama fašizma i borcima NOB-a [Who there is renovating monuments? Individuals and local communities self-initiatively renew monuments to victims of fascism and combatants of the PLW]”, Antifašistički Vjesnik, 28.5.2017. http://www.antifasisticki-vjesnik.org/hr/spomenici/9/ Tko_to_tamo_obnavlja_spomenike_/180/ (accessed 8.10.2018.); Milan Cimeša, “Otkriven obnovljeni spomenik u Veljunu [Unveiled a renewed monument in Veljun]”, Novosti, 10.7.2018, https://www.portalnovosti.com/otkriven-obnovljeni-spomenik-u-veljunu (accessed 8.10.2018.).

[28] In the currently accessible online list of the memorial heritage in the Register of Cultural Properties in the Republic of Croatia there are a mere score of monuments and memorial areas related to the WWII period.

[29] Akcija za obnovu antifašističkih spomenika [Action for the renovation of antifascist monuments]”, Kulturpunkt, June  26, 2011. http://www.kulturpunkt. hr/content/akcija-za-obnovu-antifasistickih-spomenika (accessedo 8.10.2018.) 3

[30] Međunarodni umjetnički performas u Podšpilju [International artistic performance in Podšpilje]”, Islandvis.blogspot, 27.6.2014, http://islandvis. blogspot.com/2014/06/meunarodni-umjetnicki-performas-u.html (accessed 8.10.2018.)

[31] Astrid Erll, “Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory”, in: Media and Cultural Memory. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, Erll Astrid, Nünning,Ansgar (ur.), De Gruyter, Berlin, 2008, pp. 389

[32] Martin Pogačar, Memonautica. Yugoslavia in Digital Memories, Memorials and Storytelling (doctoral dissertation), University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, 2011, pp. 9

[33] Michelle Henning, Museums, Media and Cultural Theory, Open University Press, New York, 2006, pp. 154.

[34] Jens Ruchatz, “The Photograph as Externalization and Trace”, in Media and Cultural Memory. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, Erll, Astrid; Nünning, Ansgar (ur), De Gruyter, Berlin, 2008, pp. 375–376.

[35] Jan Kempenaers, Spomenik, Roma Publications, Amsterdam, 2010.

[36] Sara Bergfors, “Spomeniks: Symbolism gone for good?”, Baltic Worlds, no. 4, December 2011, pp. 40–42. Published online at: balticworlds.com 16 January 2012. http://balticworlds.com/symbolism-gone-for-good/ (accessed 8.10.2018.)

[37] See: Boris Buden, “Children of Postcommunism”, Radical Philosophy, No. 159, Jan/Feb 2010, pp. 18–25.