How did Sanja Iveković’s work in the 1970s address the rise of consumerist tendencies in socialist Yugoslavia?

This was one of the worst essay's that I wrote at university and ended up getting a 2:2 in. I didn't understand the topic that I was writing on and I picked a module that was far too advanced for me. The referencing in here is not consistent and many of the ideas have not been fully formed or throught through. 

How did Sanja Iveković’s work in the 1970s address the rise of consumerist tendencies in socialist Yugoslavia?

Yugoslavia’s non-alignment policy in 1948 created a uniquely socialist state with its own specific economic, social and political policies that differentiated it from its other socialist counterparts. It was a one-party state under the control of the league of communists led by Tito. It combined free market socialism and self-management to create a consumer society whereby the means of production, distribution, and exchange were owned and dictated by the workers.[1] Other differences to traditional socialism within the economy included greater participation in International Trade which allowed for division of labour and integration with the world economy, exposing the work force to other economic ideas outside the sphere of socialism. There were also greater civil liberties to a certain extent for its citizens which included the rise in consumerist tendencies and the perception of art within society. In 1971 to 1975, the annual average growth rate of private consumption such as food and cloths but excluding household items was 5.3 percent.[2] This includes all purchases made by consumers such as food and cloths but does not extend to household items.[3] The artist Sanja Ivekovic explores how successfully the rise of consumerist tendencies affected the state in three case studies: Sweet Violence (1975-76), Double Life (1959- 1975) in the Unknown Heroine exhibition and Triangle (1979).

Video moment taken from Sweet Violence.

Image taken from a page in the Double Life work. 

The four photographs that make up the exhibition of Triangle. One of her most notable works. 

Ivekovic’s conceptual artistic style was used to avoid the general commercialization and the destructively ‘progressive’ approach of modernism and consumerism.[4] Lippard called it the ‘dematerialisation’[5] of art which was no longer merely seen as a decorative object that was to be hung in a gallery wall but rather it had been transformed into art for the people. The increase in consumerism meant that people no longer valued the goods that they had because it was easier to be able to afford and buy them. Welch said that the state opened up “new channels for the production and distribution of critical practice”[6] of art.  Yugoslavia was not harsh in its censorship towards art and there was more tolerance than brutality present in their censorship.[7] In Triangle, even though there was the presence of police officers and secret police (UDBA) during the parade for Tito they were less aggressive than their counterparts in other satellite states. Ivekovic was asked to leave the balcony but she was not arrested and there was no violence involved. Conceptualism also used different artistic and media techniques to communicate with the people and other negate the image that art was merely for decoration. Sweet Violence was a video art performance and one of the first explorations into using film. She was able to penetrate the private sphere and communicate and interact more directly with her audience. Conceptualism allowed artists different methods for artists to express themselves in the face of growing commercialization.   

The increase in consumerism was also not just limited to material goods but also to experiences which further helped to shape the new art movement and depict the daily lives that people had to endure under the new socialist state. Ivekovic herself said, “the conceptual artists of the first generation were not only asking what art is, but who are the artists, what’s your identity?”[8] People were allowed to travel abroad and go to social events such as the cinema and music events which exposed them to experiences outside their own country. Her art attempted to overcome its commodity status and subservience to the art market through the liberation and expression of individual people’s opinions which grew into political relevance through the artistic process.

The increased rate of consumerism in the 1970’s counteracted the socialist promise of an equal political culture because commodity production inevitably generated social inequality due to increased market mechanism. [9] Money was exchanged with an open and understood system of value and time trade-offs in a market that wanted to optimize distribution of goods and services. Not everyone was able to afford the same amount of consumer goods as each other. Archer, Duda and Stubbs suggest that there was the presence of both the working class and an upper or bourgeoise class known as the New Class who were more likely to be able to afford consumer goods.[10] Mates describes the situation in Yugoslavia in the following manner:

“It seems incompatible with a socialist society’s principles... a large number of citizens do not have their basic life needs satisfied… while other citizens at the same time have the possibility to spend millions at New Years Eve parties in Kathmandu.”[11]

The Yugoslav league of communists was supposed to represent the aspirations of the working class who were supposed to hold the leading political position as the basic force of the socialist state. The continued presence of the bourgeoise due to the rise of consumerist tendencies demonstrated that they had failed to create a ‘classless’ society which involved the withering away of the state, a key aspect of socialism.

Ivekovic use of public spaces to showcase her art brought awareness to the divide between the consumer fantasy and the reality of people’s lives caused by the increase of consumerism. The student riots of 1968 formed the Belgrade Student Union (SKC) which was seen as the main cultural focal centre where artists and professors were able to meet and discuss their ideas. The government also tolerated the opening of other public spaces for contemporary art such as art galleries. There was the Youth Tribune in Novi Sad and the Gallery Nova in Zagreb. In Double Life, Ivekovic places photos of herself from her own personal album were placed alongside similar photos in terms of location and position from adverts in magazines. For an example, a photo of a young Ivekovic is contrasted against another photo of a model from an Estee Lauder hair campaign.[12] Women were historically seen as invisible but they had internalised the language of advertising even while they are not aware of it. Many of the photos used predated the ones in the magazines, they had not been staged deliberately. These photos promote the abundance of luxury goods that were present everywhere, displayed at home or being sold in supermarkets and department stores. Many of the advertisements were placed in women’s magazines and there are 64 photos in the collection, further suggesting that there were many advertising photos for Ivekovic to choose from because there was a rise of consumerism.  

There are other examples within Ivekovic’s work that further critiqued the division between the consumer fantasy and the socialist reality. Triangle was a short 18-minute-long performance piece whereby Ivekovic was sitting on her balcony while a motor car parade for the president Tito passed by. There were many people in the parade who were celebrating but the presence of the secret police and policemen in the streets indicated that there were still issues with the socialist state as they had not achieved total support of the people. Ivekovic was asked to go back inside her apartment because they did not want to see that not everyone supported Titoism. 18 minutes was not a very long time, they had been constantly watching the population closely. She was told ‘the persons and objects are to be removed from the balcony’[13]. The ‘objects’ was a reference to the bottle of whisky that she was drinking and the novel she was reading. They were able to see in great detail what she was doing from the rooftops through the use of binoculars. There was still a tight monopoly of power from the league of communists as they wanted to maintain ‘visual order’ and create the illusion that they were a prosperous and popular socialist state. In this instance, Ivekovic has used conceptual art to expose the reality of life in the socialist state that was not as commercially or politically success as the government had hoped.

The rise in consumerist tendencies had created a dream that almost seemed unattainable to ordinary members of the socialist society. In Sweet Violence Ivekovic uses the black masking tape over the screen to disconnect viewers from the ‘sweet violence’ of media culture, a term originally used by the Italian journalist Guido Guarda.[14] The TV advertisement from the washing machine company, Obod, was not only offering the machine but also the fantasy and luxury of owning one. In the advert, the appliance is utterly removed from its natural setting in the home which is the actual site of housework. It is floating over the surface of a beautiful and calm blue sea, creating the idea of a holiday and paradise.[15] Women were usually in charge of household chores, the advertisement was offering them the luxury of being free from them because it would reduce the time needed to wash the cloths. The washing machine was trying to liberalise the modern women. It was not a common object in everyone’s household, “the woman who wants a washing machine dreams about”[16] because not everyone was able to afford one despite the perceived abundance and access to these goods. In Double Life, there was a disconnect between the models in the advertisements and the personal photos. The models were representing the fantasy of the Yugoslav dream where there was an abundance of items that people were able to buy. Their aims were similar to the American capitalist Golden Dream. It could also be interpreted as the divide between the workers who were still not able to afford those items and the continued presence of the bourgeoise to whom the advertisements were aimed at. The rise of consumerist tendencies had not affected everyone equally as there was still disparity between attainable objects and the ‘dream’ of attaining them.

Workers had even less control over the economy due to the deviation from Yugoslavia’s self-management structure which gave rise to a socialist market economy, creating a hybrid culture of socialism and capitalism. Self-management was not an efficient method to deal with the increased consumer demands because the workers favored giving themselves short term bonuses rather than investing in productive equipment that would be beneficial in the long term. The failure of the self-management model triggered the need for economic reform which further took power away from the workers. The 1976 Associated Labour law (BOAL) gave workers a position in the organization based on the precise role that they played within the role of production.[17] The election of a worker’s council and managers was a socially democratic act because the managerial board was given power over the workers. They determined the wages that they were paid and were involved with the day to day basis of running the business. Ivekovic wanted to use her art to return to the true roots of socialism. She was a student during the 1968 student riots and their political ideology also had an effect on her art work. She wanted to re-instate central state planning due to increased de-centralized state planning. The decisions regarding the allocation of resources and number of outputs was determined by independent economic organizations that did not follow one general economic plan, resulting in price distortions and regional disparities. In Sweet Violence, footage was altered from the Yugoslav televisions daily economic propaganda programme, (EPP) which was a mixture of socialism and free market capitalism.[18] In one particular black masking tape was placed over words on a Coca Cola bottle to spell out the word ‘liar’. It was a ‘lie’ that Yugoslavia was truly a socialist state, even the drink Coca Cola was seen to come from capitalist countries.

The failure of self-management further caused further class disparity, exasperated by the rise in consumerist tendencies. It caused social unrest, these were the reasons for the policemen during the parade in Triangle. Not all the different social classes supported the league of communists. There was a high level of inflation, from 1971 to 1991, Yugoslavia’s annual inflation rate was 76%.[19] Some members of the working class were not able to buy food and gas for transport. At the beginning of the 70’s there had been improvements in the rate of employment but the introduction of self-management and a market economy meant that there was still high levels of unemployment towards the end of the decade. There was also regional disparities and widespread emigration as people left the country to find better work and pay in other socialist countries, most notably the GDR.[20] The managerial boards created due to the self-management policy further diminished the rights and culture of the workers. In some instances, workers still struggled against their managers in order to gain more power. Trade Unions were supposed to support the workers and given power over the workers council but they were essentially used as a government tool that did not have real power. There was the slow privatization of social property and industry as factories and warehouses closed down. Soviet Union propaganda cast Tito as the ‘butcher’ of the working class through the introduction of corporatism, which meant that the workers were slowly losing their rights within their own industrial organizations. This was caused by the need to keep up with the demands triggered by the increase in consumerism.

Feminism was also a capitalist movement that was not seen as necessary in a socialist state whereby men and women had been legally emancipated equally through the introduction of progressive state policies. The patriarchal structure of society meant that communism had failed to acknowledge that women were still divided by unwritten rules. Women were allowed to work and have equal rights to their husbands in marriage but they were still expected to look after the household and raise the children. Ironically the title of Double Life can be seen to refer to the double standards that women had to endure. Women’s organisations were banished because they were no longer deemed as necessary by the government as they had achieved everything that they could have wanted under socialism. The feminist meeting “Comradess woman. The woman’s question: A new approach?” in 1978 was one of the first and most important feminist events in a socialist state because it acknowledged that Yugoslavia had not been able to create a completely equal society for both men and women. It was also significant that the meeting was held in the Belgrade Student Union, a place where art was also shown because the two ideas were linked together. Ivekovic was marking “different ways in which the political is established”.[21] In Triangle, there are two different narrations present. The wide shots of Tito in the parade and the secret police contrasted with the much more intimate and close-up shots of the artists herself. Tito and the secret police represented the heavy and oppressive male gaze of the state but there was also the presence of the feminist self. Ivekovic was a feminist artist that was trying to create a separate female narrative in order to give women a voice that had been constantly silenced.

Ivekovic used her artwork to criticise the contradictive nature of the Yugoslavian government because true socialist states could not create consumer societies without compromising their ideology. Yugoslavia claimed to give power back to the workers through the system of self-management and de-centralized planning. Managers and private companies were still in charge though the implementation of capitalist elements and the continued presence of a work place and social hierarchy. The Communist party was simply re-named to become the League of Communists. They failed to achieve social equality. For many, having an excess of luxury items was still a consumer dream. Market socialism had always remained imperfect, culminating in the economic recession at the end of the 1970’s. Despite the rise on consumerist tendencies, it was not enough to save the economy as there were fundamental problems with a socialist economy.

Bibliography:

Journals:

  Arthur House, “State of the art: rethinking Yugoslavia, the dictatorship that embraced conceptualism” The Calvert Journal (2016), http://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/5354/yugoslavia-art-nottingham-contemporary-monuments-should-not-be-trusted-lina

Ernest Mandel, “Yugoslav economic theory” Monthly Review, Vol 18 (1967)

 Klara Kemp Welch, “Taking Women’s rights seriously?”, Third Text, Vol 23 (2009)

Ramnath Narayanswamy, “Yugoslavia: Self-Management or Mismanagement?”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 23 (1988)

Websites:

  “Consumption” Focus economics, https://www.focus-economics.com/economic-indicator/consumption accessed: 28/12/2018

Steve. H. Hanke, “The World’s Greatest Unreported Hyperinflation”, CATO Institute, accessed: 05/01/2019 https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/worlds-greatest-unreported-hyperinflation

Books:

Lucy Lippard, “Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972” in Conceptual art: An Anthology, ed, Alexander Alberro, Blake Stimson, Revised, (London: MIT Press, 1999)

Patrick Patterson, Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2011)

  Rory Archer, Igor Duda and Paul Stubbs. Social inequalities and discontent in Yugoslav socialism. (London: Routledge, 2016)

Ruth Noack, Sanja Iveković: Triangle, (London: Afterall Publishing, 2013)

Newspaper:

Carol Kino, “Croatia’s Monumental Provocateur”, The New York Times, Dec 22, 2011, accessed 15/12/2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/arts/design/sanja-ivekovic-croatias-monumental-provocateur.html

 Catalogue:

Sanja Ivekovic Unknown Heroine, ed by Lina Dzuverovic, London: South London Art Gallery in association with Calvert 22, 2012-2013. Exhibition Catalogue, accessed 20/11/2018 https://www.southlondongallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2012SI_gallery-guide.pdf 

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[1] Ernest Mandel, “Yugoslav economic theory” Monthly Review, Vol 18 (1967), pp. 40-49

[2] Patrick Patterson, Bought and Sold: Living and Losing the Good Life in Socialist Yugoslavia (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2011), pp. 39

[3] “Consumption” Focus economics, https://www.focus-economics.com/economic-indicator/consumption accessed: 28/12/2018

[4] Lucy Lippard, “Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972” in Conceptual art: An Anthology, ed, Alexander Alberro, Blake Stimson, Revised, (London: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 294

[5] Ibid, pp. 294

[6] Klara Kemp Welch, “Taking Women’s rights seriously?”, Third Text, Vol 23 (2009), pp. 819

[7] Arthur House, “State of the art: rethinking Yugoslavia, the dictatorship that embraced conceptualism” The Calvert Journal(2016),  http://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/5354/yugoslavia-art-nottingham-contemporary-monuments-should-not-be-trusted-lina

[8] Carol Kino, “Croatia’s Monumental Provocateur”, The New York Times, Dec 22, 2011, accessed 15/12/2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/arts/design/sanja-ivekovic-croatias-monumental-provocateur.html

[9] Mandel, “Yugoslav economic theory”, pp.

[10] Rory Archer, Igor Duda and Paul Stubbs. Social inequalities and discontent in Yugoslav socialism. (London: Routledge, 2016) pp.7

[11] Ibid, pp. 189

[12] Sanja Ivekovic Unknown Heroine, ed by Lina Dzuverovic, London: South London Art Gallery in association with Calvert 22, 2012-2013. Exhibition Catalogue, accessed 20/11/2018 https://www.southlondongallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2012SI_gallery-guide.pdf 

[13] Ruth Noack, Sanja Iveković: Triangle, (London: Afterall Publishing, 2013), pp. 2

[14] Dzuverovic, Unknown Heroine

[15]Patterson, Bought and Sold, pp. 90

[16] Ibid, pp. 90

[17] Ramnath Narayanswamy, “Yugoslavia: Self-Management or Mismanagement?”, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 23 (1988) pp. 2053

[18] Dzuverovic, Unknown Heroine 

[19] Steve. H. Hanke, “The World’s Greatest Unreported Hyperinflation”, CATO Institute, accessed: 05/01/2019 https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/worlds-greatest-unreported-hyperinflation

[20] Narayanswamy, Yugoslavia, Pp. 2053

[21] Kemp‐Welch, “Taking Women's Rights Seriously?”, pp. 818