On Yugoslav Construction Industry, Non-alignment, and Architecture

Speaker: Dubravka Sekulić 

The foundation of the Non-aligned Movement in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in September 1961 represented a new opening, not only for a joint political representation of the countries trying to challenge and transcend the bipolar division of the world and imperialism during the Cold War, but also for the establishment of the direct economic relations. Yugoslav construction enterprises used the Non-alignment, as a mechanism of circulation. Among them, Energoprojekt from Belgrade, stood out among its Yugoslav peers in 1970s both for the scale and volume of the projects they did abroad, mostly in non-aligned countries, and the central role architecture department had in the expansion abroad.  

Unpacking how working in the global entanglement transformed Energoprojekt from a socialist self-managed enterprise into a postmodern corporation, I will search for material and symbolic manifestation of the interaction between Energoprojekt and Non-alignment, focusing on the conference centres the company built in Lusaka, Zambia and Harare, Zimbabwe. Following the interrelation of spatial elements, such as the roundtable - its appearance and its disappearance - I will trace withering away of the emancipatory potential of non-alignment, and open the line of critique of professionalisation in architecture as the way to normalise specific Westernised world views.

All welcome. No booking required.

Image credit: Lusaka 1970, drawing by Dubravka Sekulić

The Marxism in Culture seminar series was conceived in 2002 to provide a forum for those committed to the continuing relevance of Marxism for cultural analysis. Both "Marxism" and "culture" are conceived here in a broad sense.  We understand Marxism as an ongoing self-critical tradition, and correspondingly the critique of Marxism's own history and premises is part of the agenda. "Culture" is intended to comprehend not only the traditional fine arts, but also aspects of popular culture such as film, popular music, and fashion.  From this perspective, conventional distinctions between the avant-garde and the popular, the elite and the mass, the critical and the commercial are very much open for scrutiny.  All historical inquiry is theoretically grounded, self-consciously or not, and theoretical work in the Marxist tradition demands empirical verification.