Image Worship, Parody and Image Destruction in Serbia in the 1990s

This text offers a historical study of a milieu where, in a time of social crisis and of political upheaval, a re-emerging image worship and the renewed effort to use images and media for political purposes, provoked a range of aesthetic responses, which engaged with and against each other in a struggle for recognition. In this ›image-struggle‹ the aesthetic vocabulary of the avant-garde presents itself as a tradition that can be taken up and be used by different sides, throwing up completely unforeseeable, milieu-specific articulations and relations. It is shown how opposition groups operate with image-destruction, use parody, mockery, ritual demolition and image-mutilations against the newly emerging image-worship in Serbia in the 1990s, but also developed a certain aesthetic style and employed it against the detested presence of ›other‹ images in public space: a new ›aesthetics of poverty‹.This text offers a historical study of a milieu where, in a time of social crisis and of political upheaval, a re-emerging image worship and the renewed effort to use images and media for political purposes, provoked a range of aesthetic responses, which engaged with and against each other in a struggle for recognition. In this ›image-struggle‹ the aesthetic vocabulary of the avant-garde presents itself as a tradition that can be taken up and be used by different sides, throwing up completely unforeseeable, milieu-specific articulations and relations. It is shown how opposition groups operate with image-destruction, use parody, mockery, ritual demolition and image-mutilations against the newly emerging image-worship in Serbia in the 1990s, but also developed a certain aesthetic style and employed it against the detested presence of ›other‹ images in public space: a new ›aesthetics of poverty‹