The Distance View Conference

Speakers

Anamarija Batista is an experienced interdisciplinary researcher and curator working at the intersection of art, architecture and economics. As a senior scientist at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, she has been exploring the question of the socialist perspective on leisure time within the project "Collective Utopias of Post-War Modernism: The Adriatic Coast as a Leisure and Defence Paradise" funded by the PEEK programme. She is deeply engaged with questions of modern and contemporary art practice, architectural theory, economics and educational practice. In addition to her extensive experience in research, she also has good practice in curatorial work. To date, Batista has successfully researched and co-designed six major interdisciplinary research projects (funded by FFG, Sparkling Science, FWF, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Austrian Academy of Sciences). She is co-editor of Rethinking Density: Art, Culture and Urban Practices (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017) and Coercion and Wage Labour: Exploring Work Relations Through History and Art (London: UCL, 2017) as well as the editor of Notions of Temporalities in Artistic Practice (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2022).

Antonia Dika is a Vienna-based architect, urban planner and researcher. She currently works as senior scientist at the University of Art and Design Linz, Institute for Space and Design, where she leads the art-based research project „Collective Utopias of Post-War Modernism, Adriatic Coast as a Leisure and Defence Paradise“. Dika was a long term associate of the City of Vienna’s Urban Renewal Office, where she carried out numerous interdisciplinary neighbourhood and research projects. For the project „Reisebüro Ottakringer Straße“ she was awarded the Intercultural Dialogue Award by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture. She has been teaching at various universities, most recently at the Research Unit of Housing and Design, TU Vienna. The book "Mapping the Croatian Coast. A Road Trip to Architectural Legacies of Cold War and Tourism Boom" (Berlin: Jovis, 2020), which she has co-edited with Bernadette Krejs, was selected among 20 internationally best architecture books at the DAM Architectural Book Award 2020.

Joe Djordjevski is a historian specialized in tourism, the environment and cultural heritage in Southeast Europe. Djordjevski earned his PhD in History at the University of California, San Diego in March of 2022 where he defended his dissertation, "A Seaside for the Future: Yugoslav Socialism, Tourism, Environmental Protection, and the Eastern Adriatic Coastline, 1945-2000s". He is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Graz’s Centre for Southeast European Studies, and is a National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER) fellow for the project “Landscapes of Transition and Conflict: The Environmental Legacies of Civil War and Foreign Intervention in the Former Yugoslavia, 1991-Present.”

Svetlana Janković, Master of Science in the field of defence, security and protection, retired lieutenant colonel. She was employed in the military from 1989. Until her retirement, she worked at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Ministry of Defense and was appointed as the responsible person for gender equality issues of the Ministry of Defense in the Coordination Body of the Government for Gender Equality. She is a PhD student at the Faculty of Engineering Management of the University "Union-Nikola Tesla" in Belgrade. She is the author of over 50 scientific articles and two works of a monographic nature independently and in co-authorship. The winner of the Anđelka Milić Award for 2018. As part of the OSCE mission in Serbia, she worked in the Coordinating Body for Gender Equality of the Government of the Republic of Serbia as a gender and security consultant. (2018 and 2019) Twice (2010-2015 and 2016-2020) she was a member of the working team of the Government of the Republic of Serbia for the development of the National Action Plan for the implementation of Resolution "Women, Peace, Security" 1325 of the UN Security Council; member of the Government's special working group for the development of the Strategy for Gender Equality 2021-2030, and the action plan for the implementation of the Strategy 2021-2023. She was an assistant in the subject "Security and Protection" at the University of Defense, a trainer for the subject "Leadership" and since 2017 she has been a guest lecturer at Gender Studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences, majoring in International Security and Gender. She is currently an activist of the Belgrade Social Democratic Initiative Fund and an associate of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, the CSO Network - Women, Peace, Security in the Republic of Serbia, the Center for Nonviolent Action Belgrade-Sarajevo and Global Analytics from Sarajevo; She is also the president of the Center for Encouraging Dialogue and Tolerance Čačak and member of the Executive Board of the Red Cross Čačak.

Merima Omeragić (1988, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina) is a literary and cultural theorist, Slavic studies scholar and senior research assistant at the University of Sarajevo, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies “Prof. Dr. Zdravko Grebo”. She completed her studies in South Slavic (national) literature. After completing her Master’s Degree, she was Awarded Golden Badge as a student with the highest rank in her graduating class in the Faculty of Philosophy and University of Sarajevo. Currently she is working on her Doctoral Thesis “Post-Yugoslav Antiwar Women’s Prose”, on General Literature and Theory of Literature at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade (Republic of Serbia). Her research focuses on South Slavic literature, culture, art, film and contemporary theories. She is an author of scientific papers published in relevant national and international reviews and journals. Together with Dubravka Ugrešić, she is the co/author of the book „Brnjica za vještice [The Scold's Bridle]“ (2021). She has participated in numerous significant international conferences where she presented some topics relating to comparative, transnational, post-Yugoslav, trans-religious, as well as interdisciplinary and intersectional contexts and approaches.

Dinka Pavelić is an architect from Zagreb, Croatia, she completed postgraduate studies at The Berlage Institute in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Currently working on a doctoral thesis on the spatial development of the island "Archipelagopolis - at home at the sea" at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. She taught urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, at the Landscape Architecture study, as a part-time assistant. As a guest professor, she taught at the Strelka Institute in Moscow, and was part of the European Commission's aid to the Ukrainian government on restructuring the Coal sector. She was the chief and responsible editor of the professional architectural magazine "Man and Space" and engaged in the administrative committees of Croatian architects professional associations (UHA, DAZ). She is a practising architect and urban planner. Currently employed at the School of Applied Arts, Department of Architecture, Zagreb.

Tanja Petrović is a principal research associate at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU in Ljubljana. She is interested in the uses and meanings of socialist and Yugoslav heritage in post-Yugoslav societies, as well as in cultural, linguistic, political, and social processes that shape the reality of these societies. She is the author and editor of several books and numerous articles and essays in the fields of anthropology of post-socialism, memory studies, masculinity, gender history, heritage studies, linguistic anthropology, and labour history. Amongst them are "Yuropa: Jugoslovensko nasleđe i politike budućnosti u postjugoslovenskim društvima" (Fabrika knjiga 2012), "Mirroring Europe: Ideas of Europe in Europeanization in Balkan Societies"(Brill Publishing 2014), "Srbija i njen jug: Južnjački dijalekti između jezika, kulture i politike" (Fabrika knjiga 2015), and "Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People’s Army" (Duke University Press 2024).

Franziska Schink Born and raised in the GDR, I am dealing with spaces and aesthetics of everyday life, which I examine in the context of social and political developments. Questions arising from current living conditions are often the starting point for my work and research, with the aim of creating spaces for thinking and experiencing in images, texts or scenographic installations that create a framework for discussion and reflection. My artistic process also involves working with archive material. The material is a starting point to reinterpret the past from the present and to reflect on it for the future. I often work in collaborative and collective processes that address issues of social and political change for a common future. After graduating as an Ergotherapist (2000), I started to rethink living spaces and living conditions and to reinterpret different forms of dependency during a sailing trip around the world (2001 to 2007). I then started studying space&designSTRATEGIES (2013) at the University of Arts in Linz, where I graduated with the Austrian State Prize in 2019. Since 2021 I have been working there as professor assistant with artistic tasks and in teaching on art and society.

Slavica Stamatović Vučković is an Associate Professor and Vice Dean for International Cooperation at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Montenegro. She obtained her master's degree from the University "La Sapienza" in Rome and earned her doctoral degree from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade. She has received numerous foreign scholarships (National Technical University of Athens; Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies - I.S.U.F.I., University of Lecce; JFDP - Iowa State University, USA). She is the author of the monograph "Architectural Communication: Cultural Objects in Montenegro 1945-2000" (University of Montenegro, 2018), for which she received an award at the Third Montenegrin Salon of Architecture. She has also authored the book "Monuments of the Second World War in Montenegro" (Expeditio, Kotor, 2020), as well as numerous scientific research papers published in domestic and international journals and publications. She participated in the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2008. She is one of the recipients of the Thirteenth of July Award (2009), the highest state recognition in Montenegro.

Zoran Torbica During his younger days, he excelled in the areas of management and organization. In his twenties, he successfully ran a marketing and PR agency. His interest in the Internet and new technologies brought wireless internet to Serbia, as he was one of the first providers in the Balkans. Not long after that, he launched a domain registration service with card payments, for the first time in these areas. In addition, Zoran Torbica started a non-governmental organization, called “Centar za razvoj Interneta”, which contributed to the knowledge and development of the Internet in Serbia. In the recent past, Zoran Torbica was a special advisor to The Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government and also an Advisor to the Major of the City of Koper in Slovenija. In addition to the above, Zoran Torbica is recognizable on the basis of numerous successful conferences that he organized, including Ekomobilnost, Adria Summit, Blogomanija; Tvitomanija; Nova Energija.

* The biographies were translated and edited by Emina Šabić

Programme
30 Aug 2023, Wednesday
Leisure and Defence on the Adriatic Coast – Military

13:00–13:15 Introduction by Anamarija Batista and Antonia Dika

13:15–14:00 Antonia Dika, University of Art and Design Linz: Military on the Coast in Times of Peace, A Map is a Map is a Map is a Map

14:00–14:45 Tanja Petrović, Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana: Military, Cities, Military Cities

14:45–15:30 Zoran Torbica, Facebook group JRM: JRM in the Heart and on Facebook

15:30–16:00 Pause

16:00–16:45 Svetlana Janković, Master of science in the field of defence, security and protection, retired lieutenant colonel: Women in the Army

16:45–17:30 Slavica Stamatović Vučković, Faculty of Architecture, University of Montenegro: Transformation of ex-Military Zones in Montenegro: Porto Montenegro in Tivat

17:30–18:15 Vjekoslav Gašparović, architect: Conversion of Military Ground into Tourist Ground – Experiences from Istria

18:15–18:30 Pause

18:30–19:30 Panel discussion: Military Spaces on the Adriatic Coast, Memories, Transformations

31 Aug 2023, Thursday
Leisure and Defence on the Adriatic Coast – Tourism

11:00–11:45 Tour through the exhibition with the curators Anamarija Batista and Antonia Dika

11:45–12:30 Anamarija Batista, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna & Vienna University of Economics: Spatial Scenographies and Socio-Market Concept of Vacation on the Adriatic Coast

12:30-13:15 Joe Djordjevski, University of Graz: 'A Powerful Ally': Tourism and Environmental Protection in the Development of the Adriatic Coast During Yugoslav Socialism, 1960s-1980s 

13:15-14:00 Dinka Pavelić, Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana: Private and Public Sea

14:00-15:00 Lunch break

15:00-15:45 Merima Omeragić, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Sarajevo: Cultural PoEtics of Female Leisure

15:45-16:30 Franziska Schink, University of Art and Design Linz: The People Welcomed the Guests Very Warmly with an Apple

16:30-17:00 Pause

17:00-18:00 Panel discussion: Coastal Transformation, The Question of Maritime Property and Access to the Coastline

18:00–open end Exhibition Closing Party