"a monument to the decline of monuments"

January 18, 2012 4:20 PM

After the highly publicized Bruce Lee monument was erected in Mostar, a city and municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2005, a series of similar ventures were initiated in rural Serbia. Some sociologists describe the glorification of nonpolitical celebrity figures as the result of an identity crisis caused by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, a period when a once functioning multi-ethnic unity collapsed.

— Turbo Sculpture is an essay by Aleksandra Domanović about sculptures of pop culture heroes, e.g. Bruce Lee, Rocky Balboa and Bob Marley, which have been placed or proposed in the nation-states that once comprised Yugoslavia. You can also watch a photo-illustrated reading of the essay voiced by a dead-pan British man. [via We Find Wildness]
posted by Kattullus (5 comments total)

This is fantastic.

DONT HAPPY BE WORRY
posted by koeselitz at 4:38 PM on January 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

I vastly prefer pop-culture heroes to the bronze glorification of the proud defenders of the slave state that litter southern municipalities here in the US. Here in RI, we have Mr. Potatohead statues, and a bronze wave with bare feet sticking out in Newport.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:15 PM on January 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

The sad thing is that the statue of Bruce Lee got vandalized several times.
I guess it's better than statues of people that started the wars. The real war memorial in Mostar is the old front line.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 8:07 PM on January 18, 2012

No statue of Tito Jackson? Balkans, I am disappoint.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:29 AM on January 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

It’s been the first time that Mostar is famous for something that is not war, conflict, reconstruction, divided city, imposed solutions

Thats a statement from Veselin Gatalo there - I think its pretty clever, creating a meme for Mostar that didnt involve bullet riddled walls and so on, changing outside perceptions etc. Perhaps this sociological essay is a roundabout way of trying to put them back in their wee box.
posted by sgt.serenity at 2:45 PM on January 19, 2012