By defining
“Turbo Architecture” as “a post-socialist mainstream in
nationalizing collective identity through architecture”, the author
of the book “Almost Architecture” Srđan Jovanović Weiss is
presenting his view on the complex relationships between politics,
identity search, transition and war itself, all of that represented
through specific historical and contemporary strategies in
architecture. This book, in an interesting way, deals with depicting
the major political shifts and turbulence periods in former Yugoslav
and Serbian recent past through contexts of construction or
deconstruction of symbolically charged buildings.
The author
of the book starts with his explanation of “turbo folk” as ruling
“culture” during the 1990's (read “war time”) identifying it
with “annulment of the rules”, which embraced in itself organized
crime, intelligence, major media, commercial architecture, and
“turbo-folk” music (“local collision of electronic dance beats
and neo-traditional melodies” – where the prefix “turbo” was
extracted from). In further analysis, the author says that “Turbo
Architecture rose from the dirt or the desire to be accepted as great
style”, similar as Serbian politics during 1990's desired. “Turbo
Architecture is global because it rejects modernism... (and it) wins
its global character by consciously incorporating whatever is
emerging as global at a given moment.” Easy pirating of public
identity became the code. “It was a model at large, open for
everyone's use – not only to forget about the isolation and misery
in the nation, but to do so in the most victorious and truthfully
fake fashion possible.” As it was put in the end, the idea was to
make the best out of a loss. According to the book's author, in the
extremely difficult conditions of economic sanctions in Serbia during
the 1990's, Turbo Architecture marked the “accelerated decline –
a perverse speeding toward the approaching political crash of the
socialist state.”
The chapter “Milošević as Architect”
basically deals with Milošević's “decision” not to build, not
to solidify his area of power in architecture (as Tito or Ceausescu
did), but rather to, through absence of his architecture, to open a
wide gap for uncontrolled construction (similar as his steady public
absence resulted with more control over the public). It appeared that
the main “architects” of the Milošević time were Serbian
refugees from Croatia and Bosnia during the war time, who preferred
the outskirts of Belgrade for starting a new life, instead of Kosovo,
where Milošević tried (and failed) to redirect them. According to
the book's author, Turbo Architecture became a dominant force to make
up for the loss of a national identity, to “substitute” authentic
identity for a fictitious one – in this case inscribed in concrete
and stone. His theses about the absence of “Milošević's
architecture” is depicted through only two examples of commissioned
constructions during Milošević's time: the underground station “Vuk
Karadžić” (but it never had underground railway system, which was
never built to follow it) and the monument of eternal light made to
commemorate the “victory of Serbia over NATO”, both built in
Belgrade. According to the author of the book, both “monuments”
are in a way foreshadowing Milošević's larger failures to come. If
we would say that totalitarian architecture is usually erecting at
the declination of totalitarian power, then interesting thing
happened after Milošević arrest and transfer to The Hague. The very
same Turbo Architecture raised during his decade was promoted as a
new national style at the Venice Architecture Biennial in 2002. “The
Serbian panel for the biennial projected national pride in
withstanding the destruction of NATO (which was incredibly minor
compared to the destruction of Sarajevo or Vukovar) by promoting a
catalogue of buildings erected during Milošević's ruling time as
proof of endurance.”
The following chapter “NATO as
Architectural Critic” gives a broader view on different historical
contexts of construction and deconstruction. Turning away from the
Eastern bloc after World War II toward liberal Western democracies,
was also visible in terms of architecture - Yugoslavia experimented
in modernism, appropriating Western avant-garde, in a metaphorical
and intuitive way. Post WWII modernist Yugoslav architecture was an
escape of tradition and a proof of a shift of Yugoslav politics to
the pro-liberal image endorsed by the West. During the NATO bombing
of FR Yugoslavia in 1999, precise targets were chosen to be destroyed
– Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs, Army Headquarters and many
others – all of them charged with the symbolical meaning and the
context which they were built in at first place. Here is where the
author's game is starting. What he is saying is that, as part of a
“new struggle against fascism”, NATO selected to destroy the very
buildings constructed in the postwar period to symbolize the struggle
of a “stubborn nation against fascism.” He is further arguing
that the architecture used by the state of Serbia was built before
Serbian strategies have been recognized as nationalist. From this,
the author is deducting that by bombing, NATO branded examples of
Serbian postwar modernism as being fascist, which leads us to the
point that in difference to the architecture of the Third Reich for
example, which has been remembered by context of its construction,
the memory of Yugoslav modernist architecture will be built upon
conditions of its destruction, although the author claims that this
could not be the only reason for that. In a way it is a pity that the
author didn't develop these theses further, leaving it as partially
based deduction which, in the opposite case, could reveal more
acknowledgments about problematics of assigned meanings, identity
search/swaps, representation, relationships and the dominant context
of the recent Serbian past.
In the subcontext of the book there
is the question about the power to assign meaning and to ensure
further reading. In some cases, it is the power of the totalitarian
nation-state and in the other, it is the matter of global, capital
led power. In the shift and the Serbian state adjustment to
capitalist conditions, what could we, for example, expect the bombed
military headquarter to be in the future? Headquarter of some
international bank? Adjustment to global financial market and the way
how it's functioning, the adjustment of national courts to
non-national criteria, as well as handling international funds in
Serbia are led by interests either of nationalist or of neo-liberal
political parties. All those “adjustments” are followed by strict
control of neo-liberal Ministry of finances, with the clear aim of
capital accumulation which, as kind of collateral damage, leaves
behind thousands of people without their jobs, insufficient social
programs, declining education system and non-functional cultural
funding. Back to the book, in one part of it, it says that “what
differentiates Serbian Turbo from architectural amassment of kitsch
in California, Florida or Long Island is that the latter is
quintessentially apolitical.” This statement could be
unquestionable stand point in case we say that the face of capital is
apolitical too. Following slow turning of Serbian country to global
values, it's still to be seen what “architecture style” will be
erected out of it and at the end, who/what will be its the most
pationate critic. Maybe what is following could be the crtitic of new
forms of fascism, which could not be disccused without relating it to
the capitalism.
Srđan Jovanović Weiss is an architect
living in New York City. He was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude
in 2004/2005. About the book: Published by Akademie Schloss Solitude,
Jean-Baptiste Joly; Concept and design by Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss;
Edition: kuda.nao, book 001; Introductory essay by Yehuda Safran;
Language: English; ISBN 978-3-937158-11-2