Transcript 01: Marta Popivoda

Transcript of the podcast-episode with Marta Popivoda. Editor: Hana Ćurak Transcript and translation: Merjema Đipa

H: I saw your film „Yugoslavia – How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body “. I found it interesting for a million reasons, it even made me cry, which I didn't expect. Then I saw in internet comments that people have an emotional reaction to it. I would like to talk about something, which I think I should call positionality. You start the film talking about what Yugoslavia meant for your parents, grandparents and what it means for you now. I found it interesting to observe it from a third perspective. I was born in 1994 and I don't know anything about it. I really wasn't aware that that heritage had any effect on me because I figured it couldn't have. The heritage which could have had its effect on me is that from the 92'-95' war. It turns out the former has an effect, for example, I know all those Partisan songs – I don't know how, because my generation never learned them. I’m simply immersed in culture back then, without actively seeking for it. How is that possible? How is it possible that I, having nothing to do with that country, feel such a strong connection?

          M: I find what you're saying very interesting, and the fact I'm having such direct feedback from someone who truly belongs to the nineties generation. I also think many people experienced the film quite emotionally. I did consciously use, for example that music, those songs, which we, wanting to or not, or being aware of it or not, somehow know. It's interesting that you know them too. I belong to the last generation of pioneers, which can be seen in the film. The narration, the essay form of the movie, is a very personal film form... I must accentuate that in this case it isn't only me because the narration was written by Ana Vujanovic and me together. She's my long-time associate. We constructed a subject connecting the experiences of our generations through that narration (she's a tad older generation). Hence, what is said in the film isn't only mine personally, but it does represent the position we speak from. The idea was to use those songs for their affective potential, and I think that was visible, especially in our context. It was visible since people simply reacted, not only to the music but to that content and that story taking us through the narration about that specific collective body and how, in a way, it changed us, and then finally disintegrated. The collective body transformed itself from a socialist collective body to, sadly, nationalist collective bodies across that country of ours that fell apart. Regarding the nationalist collective body, in the film we’re looking at and from the Belgrade perspective. When showing the film, both internationally or in our regional or local context, I always like to say that it's a very personal perspective on the history of Yugoslavia – that it isn't a movie about everything that happened in Yugoslavia and that the Belgrade perspective exists. Not a perspective of Belgrade or the authorities in Belgrade, but us, people living in Belgrade at the time. Us, the people, knew what was happening there and we perceived some things from the position we were in. I can't have the experience you had as a little girl, even though we both lived in that country during different timeframes. I remember someone asking me once why there wasn't any war in the film? I don't think that there isn't any war, I think it's there, but we talk about how we were finding out about the siege of Sarajevo for example. There was a media blockade and if you weren't part of the very politically engaged families, there wasn't plenty of information. We went to our premiere in Sarajevo in 2013 by car and it was very emotional for me because it was the first time I understood how close Sarajevo actually is. It's like a 5-hour drive from Belgrade, how is that possible?! It’s interesting, for the 9th of March, being an anti-war protest, there we use materials that weren't used before because they were technically defective. In the case of this film, it works phenomenally because everything is falling apart, even the material. It's a very aggressive situation because there we have a war on an associative plan. Milosevic took tanks out even on the people in Belgrade who were against him, so there's a clear association to what is happening on a larger scale even though it isn't expressed in the most direct way. I don't know if I answered your question, but we did arrive somewhere else.

H: You certainly did. Something else I also find very interesting from my perspective, as an audience member - assuming I'm speaking for a greater number of people, as do you in the film -  something interesting is that the photos and videos of the rallies are somewhat familiar to me, and I had an association to the endless recordings of children’s folklore shows I saw during the late nineties. On the other hand, video recordings of those anti-war protests as well as everything that was happening at the end of the nineties and two thousands in Belgrade is completely unfamiliar to me, but by some logic it should be the other way around. Why do I find this interesting? Because of temporality. That post-Yugoslav temporality is, I would say, very specific. There is still a post-Yugoslav intellectual space, which is detached from the Balkan reality, while simultaneously tightly bound to it. It's interesting how it's possible that such different generations -  I'm now referring to your new movie whose trailer I watched -  generations with such different experiences interwoven with trauma than any kind of solidarity or collectivism – how is it possible that we are all found in that temporal moment with our hope, intellectual aspirations etc.? Referring to everything Yugoslavia stood for. How is it possible that this connects us more than anything that came after?

          M: It’s debatable whether it really does connect us more... Maybe it connects us in our circles because we refer to that socialist heritage within what was largely a progressive society, with which, at least with the ideas that existed then, I somewhat identify. Not with all of them but certainly plenty. In my work I constantly address the tension between history and memory, which I think is very important for our context, because as witnessed in the last decades and more – we have a revision of history. History changes according to the needs of the ruling ideology, which is supremely problematic. I think we live in a time of complete relativization. Politics aren't what they used to be, in the sense of it being a space in which our futures are projected – space, time or some public practice. It's all daily interventions and marketing tricks, because we now live in neoliberal capitalism where it doesn't matter what you say anymore. You are part of the system disconnecting you and pushing you towards a collective body, atomizing it, making it such as to get us thinking that all our mutual problems are actually solely ours – that it's our fault and that we aren't good enough, or we're unsuccessful, or we don't have a job, or we can't afford our children’s education etc. We live in a time during which a class society is being radically and intensively rebuilt. That's why to me history and the memories we have of it, primarily not Yugoslavia as a territory, not the Yugonostalgia discourse how nice and perfect everything was, but the fact that we, as you say the new generations, because I belong to the last generation of pioneers who didn't live in socialist Yugoslavia most of their lives. I take the figure of the last pioneer, that is the last generation of pioneers, as someone who lives on the line between socialism and neoliberal capitalism and has an emancipatory role. We've experienced some things through society and family constellations, through a collective memory we know, and then there's this Benjamin gesture: tigers’ leap into the future. Ana and I, in our work and collaboration, constantly work on certain ideas and histories being invested into the future. That's the work with the future and history, but not so much. What does that history mean today? Why is it important to make a film about one of the first partisans in Yugoslavia? It doesn't even matter that she's one of the first, it's her story that matters. It matters that she, as a political prisoner finally ended up in Auschwitz and became part of the resistance there. It's important we understand resistance is possible, always. That's what we get to see regionally in the context of this film, how the memory and history of the socialist Yugoslav project confront the current context in which, at least in Serbia, we're losing free education, which directly enables vertical mobility through society. That means that the daughter of a cleaning lady can become a doctor, she can become the president, she can become whatever she likes. The question remains, how ideal is that in practice – but at least structurally there is that promise. The downside of a society like this one is rising class segregation that alienates us from each other and atomises the collective body.

H: It's very interesting to showcase an archive in real-time, especially in the context of post-Yugoslav space, because that archive drastically deviates from the reality it's based on, which I'll dare to say is, in the last thirty years, based on a notorious lie. There's an element in the film that got me thinking in the context of freedom and truth. What's specific for the collective body generally is obedience, not resistance. It's very interesting to watch throughout your whole film because plenty has changed. Everything falls apart and changes shape. The dresses in one rally (slet) are different from the dresses in other rallies (slet). In an eighties slet, we even see Winnie the Pooh – that’s genius, the images are genius. Before that we have three fingers throughout protests that are pro-democratic and pro-freedom. Just like the Crvena Banda, it's complete insanity.

          M: Yes, an ideological confusion. That's why we ask the question: was this all for capitalism? It's one thing to fight against, for example, Milosevic, but what were you fighting for? What was the imagined alternative? Many people weren't aware of that. I went to those protests, and I was always in shock. There were people there who were against Milosevic because there even was a war, but there were unfortunately also those because he was losing the war. That’s unfortunately a curse we have.

H: Well, it is a curse. For example, the imagery of entering parliament or the house of assembly, it all reminded me of what was happening in America last year... it's very similar behaviour: jumping on tables, pissing on plants etc. One thing that truly stays a constant thread in the movie from beginning to end is the obedience of the collective body, even in the greatest chaos.

          M: I don't know. I'm not sure that a collective body requires obedience. When we say obedience, it's something that seems... I wouldn't say the partisan collective body was based on obedience. It was based on the resistance of the Nazi occupation of a country – it's self-organised resistance. You relate to some other people and bodies, and you act together. Of course, collective bodies are different. During work actions in Yugoslavia, which was a very specific practice happening on a large scale - just like sletovi, people didn't have to come. When I was showing the movie regionally, I was told things like: „Wooow, I was part of a slet, it was a great honour! “– because the best pupils, the best students, were chosen, but you weren't really obliged to participate. This film came to be within the frame of long-term research Ana Vujanovic, Bojana Cvejic and I did in a cultural centre in Paris. The idea for the film was born during this research. The research was about performance and the public. My task as an artist was to investigate archives regarding mass performances. Not necessarily for Yugoslavia alone, but then I stuck to it because I the demonstrations and the slet imagery produced an immediate aha effect. From the slet footages we can firstly read some economic, political, and historic tendencies. The main shock for me was when we saw the material from ’87; after that I did a piece based solely on the ’87 slet. In it, nationalism and the possibility of war is directly discussed. I was shocked, I wanted to ask my parents how couldn’t they know it would happen? I must show resistance to your idea of obedience. We shouldn't be afraid of being part of the collective body. Capitalism, even though it's presented as a non-ideology, is also an ideology that really affects how we act towards each other in public space, how careful we are etc. The collective body exists always, anyways. The dominant ideology works on us – we are always under its influence without even being aware of it. We can resist it on the level of everyday life. That is how we act towards people around us, close and not close, towards people we meet on the street etc. There's a quote from Richard Sennett that says: „When ideology becomes a belief, it drives people to action. “For example, in this movie, the moment ideology became belief was right after the war, exactly in the moment of building that new socialist state. In those radne akcije, many things we couldn't make for years after that were built. An example of that radna akcija, for me, in the first ten years (because they continue later) is that you can see people believe in it. Then with time that ideology is institutionalised through sletovi and such. The reason I mentioned the research we did is because of the parallel comparison of the rallies existing in other socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc that are a lot more rigorous and in unison. You see there’s no unified form, it was quite open to interpretation. The question I always ask is not only form, but also content. You have a collective body, even on the level of individual slet imagery. What's being suggested by it? Is it ideas of solidarity? A collective taking care of individuals in society? It existed, at least at an ideological level. Or in Nazi mass performances and marches – what's being suggested there? It's not just a question of form. Sometime forms are similar, but content is completely different. I don't think we can ever ignore that, content itself. What's being suggested by a certain ideology?

H: Absolutely! And how it works in the present, how that heritage functions in the present and does it function? I remembered a conversation with young Sarajevo visual artist Bojan Stojcic, who in residence here in Berlin noticed how the collective body in Germany works. I’m sure you also know it - how if you're at, for example, the cashier’s and don't put a grocery divider on the track, someone will do it for you in a very passive aggressive manner, and things like that. He then investigated the heritage of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. There's a sports park named after him here in Berlin, they call him the father of modern gymnastics. Bojan juxtaposed videos of migrants in Berlin doing his exercises (those from Friedrich Ludwig Jahn) in today’s Berlin. I find the comedy fit well into it. We can notice that type of dysfunctional collective body heritage in different ways in countries of former Yugoslavia. People have memories of something that functions, and they try to continue living that way in something that doesn't, whilst not even being aware they're referring to something prior.

          M: What do you mean by that specifically?

H: Another example is research I did with a colleague. It's about state officials who worked in state services in Yugoslavia and now, the international positioning of their country has changed completely. They continued to do the same work, while some other things that had to be dealt with came along. The only heritage they can refer to because it's the only one that worked, is actually unwanted.

          M: Yeah, I don't know. Interesting in any case. I think that after almost three decades, socialist topics have massively been made taboo. When I was researching and working on the film not many artists were dealing with Yugoslavia, because I think there were people on an independent scene, at least in Serbia, guiding critical discourse related to the Yugoslav heritage but it was as if nothing existed. There definitely was a lot less because the dominant discourse was very anti-communist, anti-socialist. Specifically in Serbia, primarily because Milosevic declared himself as socialist, whilst being a nationalist firstly, thus contaminating those ideas and then people connected the two and it was very harmful for the local and regional context. What I find important and why I mention it is because just now we have some attempts of an organised left, regionally, to enter mainstream politics. It's very significant because we need to understand that there is an alternative which isn't „We're going back to Yugoslavia! “, but actually, a question is how these ideas can function today Some are very relevant, and some aren't. I think that therefore Yugoslavia matters very much. Because many historians and sociologists of those mid to older generation would say: „Ah kids, why are you bothering with Yugoslavia today!?“. I think it matters because it is a context in which some of those ideas succeeded (not all, we know how it ended), but it is proof of how all of it can happen. Neoliberal capitalism makes us think that nothing else is possible. This is the natural state. It's natural for us to compete, not to be in solidarity. It's natural to be alone in the world and to constantly compare yourself to others, and that if you're rich you're better than the poor and that you managed to ensure certain things for yourself. This sort of Darwinist approach that is closely intertwined with capitalism. I think it's very important that a historical reference has it a bit re-read and broken, because it really happened. Many ideas of socialist Yugoslavia were very progressive for the 21st century: non-aligned movement, the idea of a supranational state like Yugoslavia, then we have the EU and of course other socialist values like free education, free healthcare. What are the consequences of these things? The consequences are vertical social mobility. For me, a different collective body in which, we hope, there is more care and solidarity.

H: Those are great last words to remember for collective future thinking. Marta thank you very much for the conversation, it was a pleasure.

          M: Thank you for the conversation too 😊