Suchergebnisse

This theoretically and empirically grounded book uses case studies of political graffiti in the post-socialist Balkans and Central Europe to explore the use of graffiti as a subversive political media. Despite the increasing global digitisation, graffiti remains widespread and popular, providing with a few words or images a vivid visual indication of cultural conditions, social dynamics and power structures in a society, and provoking a variety of reactions. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as detailed interdisciplinary analyses of "patriotic," extreme-right, soccer-fan, nostalgic, and chauvinist graffiti and street art, it looks at why and by whom graffiti is used as political media and to/against whom it is directed. The book theorises discussions of political graffiti and street art to show different methodological approaches from four perspectives: context, author, the work itself, and audience.

Abstract
This article deals with mostly negative ideological images of refugees, as they erupted in political graffiti and street art (stickers, stencils, various inscriptions) in Slovenia during the so-called refugee crisis from the fall of 2015 on. Its basic questions are three: How is the ideological process of othering the refugees constructed in political graffiti? How does this relate to dominant discourses and practices in Slovenian society (from official politics to mass media)? What were the reactions against such sprayed hate speech (so pro-refugee graffiti)? The process of othering progresses in two steps: refugees are first imagined as an unified mass that is radically different from imaginary notions of "Slovenianism" and "Europeanism," which then serves as the basis for differentiation between more and less acceptable of them. On these grounds, four different ideological images are created: a refugee as a criminal, a refugee as an uninvited visitor, a refugee as a powerless victim, and a refugee as a global proletarian. About 150 original photos of anti- and pro-refugee graffiti, mostly from Slovenia (but for comparative reasons also from the whole region), are analyzed using the semiotic method as developed by its classics and finally interpreted with Theodor Adorno and Alexander Mitscherlich's concepts of "displacement of hatred" and Seymour Martin Lipset's concept of "extremism of the center."

Summary: The article is based on the study of informal features of celebrating the former national holiday, the Republic Day (of the SFRY), in post-socialist Slovenia: Yugonostalgic parties, concerts, political graffiti and street art, songs, various public events, news in the media and internet events (holiday greetings, Facebook groups, blogs, virtual Yugoslavias etc.). In the research I applied a combination of the usual cultural-studies methods (urban ethnography, sociology of time and critical visual semiology), which deals with these phenomena from the point of its production (top-down) and from the point of its reception (bottom-up). These celebrations are, on the one hand, increasingly commodified (in the sense of pop-resistance, painless provocation, pure entertainment or profitable market niche), while on the other hand, they present a critique, challenge, opposition and symbolic alternative to contemporary Slovenian dominant ideological currents and politics (ethno-nationalism and neo-liberalism).

Summary: The article is based on the study of informal features of celebrating the former national holiday, the Republic Day (of the SFRY), in post-socialist Slovenia: Yugonostalgic parties, concerts, political graffiti and street art, songs, various public events, news in the media and internet events (holiday greetings, Facebook groups, blogs, virtual Yugoslavias etc.). In the research I applied a combination of the usual cultural-studies methods (urban ethnography, sociology of time and critical visual semiology), which deals with these phenomena from the point of its production (top-down) and from the point of its reception (bottom-up). These celebrations are, on the one hand, increasingly commodified (in the sense of pop-resistance, painless provocation, pure entertainment or profitable market niche), while on the other hand, they present a critique, challenge, opposition and symbolic alternative to contemporary Slovenian dominant ideological currents and politics (ethno-nationalism and neo-liberalism).

In the article, the author deals with two heroes: - Gavrilo Princip (1894-1918) was a member of Mlada Bosna, who shot at an archduke, to the successor to the Habsburg throne, Franz Ferdinand; - general Rudolf Maister (1874-1934) was a poet and commander of the South Slavic forces in the lower Styria and Carinthia in the years 1918 and 1919. The author analyzed forty-three examples of graffiti and street art pieces of different formats (graffiti, stencils, stickers, murals etc.), dedicated to Princip and Maister. Theoretically, his research combines graffiti and street art studies with a critical analysis of cult of personality of political leaders. *** V članku avtor obravnava dva heroja, Gavrila Principa (1894-1918), člana Mlade Bosne, atentatorja, ki je streljal na nadvojvodo, na naslednika habsburškega prestola Franza Ferdinanda; in na generala Rudolf Maistra Vojanova (1874-1934), pesnika in poveljnika južnoslovanskih sil na spodnji Štajerski in Koroški v letih 1918 in 1919. Avtor je analiziral 43 primerov grafitov in uličnih umetniških del različnih formatov (grafiti, šablone, nalepke, freske itd. Raziskava združuje študije grafitov in uličnih umetnosti s kritično analizo kulta osebnosti političnih voditeljev.

Petindvajset let po krvavem razpadu socialistične Jugoslavije so zidovi postjugoslovanskih mest še vedno polni grafitov dveh domovin: aktualne nacionalne države in nekdanje jugoslovanske federacije. Glavna raziskovalna vprašanja članka, ki temelji na avtorjevem longitudinalnem raziskovanju in semioloških (kvalitativnih in kvantitativnih) metodoloških pristopih je, kako, kje in zakaj so v tej specifični urbani subkulturi Jugoslavija, njen socializem, njene protifašistične korenine in njeni voditelji (de)konstruirani, slavljeni in obsojani. Na ravni denotacije se grafiti in street art, ki se pogosto konfrontirajo v grafitarskih bitkah, delijo na pro- in protijugoslovanske. Na ravni konotacije se pojavljajo trije glavni ideološki antagonizmi: socialistični federalizem vs. nacionalizem, Tito vs. njegovi nasprotniki in antifašizem vs. fašizem. Temu sledi analiza ekspresivnih strategij tovrstne urbane produkcije, kot so provokacija in kritika, afirmacija in kontinuiteta, označevanje terena, nenehni antagonizem in semiološka gverila.

Why is there nostalgia for real socialism? Is it but a logical response to sudden, dramatic transformation? Don't people remember those days anymore—or do they remember them all too well? In popular opinion, nostalgia for socialism is something fabricated, invented, and then imposed by different groups of people to achieve some goals: to open a new commercial niche, to attain political credit, to win popular support, to get artistic inspiration, and so on. Thus, many academic studies have examined only this instrumental side of the phenomenon, limiting it to the "industry of nostalgia" only. But research shows that nostalgia is in fact a retrospective utopia, a wish and a hope for a safe world, a fair society, true friendships, mutual solidarity, and well-being in general, in short, for a perfect world. As such, it is less a subjective, arbitrary, ideological effort to recall the past as it is, an undetermined, undefined, amorphous wish to transcend the present. So nostalgia for socialism in fact does not relate exclusively and precisely to past times, regimes, values, relations, and so on as such, but it embodies a utopian hope that there must be a society that is better than the current one.