 |
Exhibitions :::
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home About the Museum Exhibitions Events Collections Departments Manak's House Visit us Contact Guest Book Sadržaj - Content |
The Plastic NinetiesAuthors: |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
The crucial progress of civilization, embedded in the twentieth century on
the basis of inventions and use of various types of plastics, can be
viewed from different angles, including developmental-technological,
market-utility, socio-cultural, communication-symbolic standpoints. In
this context, the museum representation of the Serbian socio-cultural
space can be considered equivalent to others as a framework to shed
light on the meaning and role of plastics under specific conditions of
the foundation, development, climax and disintegration of Yugoslavia,
followed by wars, international isolation and, above all, all aspects of
transition.  Historically, the time of paradox and cultural inversion that marked the nineties represents the result and mirror of the previous, decades-long existence of socialist Yugoslavia as a state which was, since its very beginning, conditioned to a number of contradictions, the need to overcome those and successive attempts to find the third course. Beginning with the postwar tergiversation between the proclaimed brotherhood with the Soviet Union and the "quiet cooperation” with the United States and Western European countries, to the process of industrialization, urbanization and the initial disintegration of rural communities in the sixties, and the seventies and the introduction of the new social stratum of the gastarbeiters – migrant workers – and its status confrontation with already significant members of the middle class in the homeland, the maintained system of values contained eclectic models of the existence. The beginning and the end of the crucial eighties, however, were marked with the death of Josip Broz Tito (in 1980) – the undisputed leader, and the fall of the Berlin Wall (in 1989), which, symbolically, speaks of the internal socio-cultural reevaluation and its global confirmation of the sustainable socialism as one of the biggest illusions of the twentieth century. In light of the above, it is very important that Serbia - as, according to many concepts, dominant part of the former Yugoslavia - experienced relatively rapid economic (industrial) development from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, in consequence of the official policy created by the Communist Party and Tito himself, resulting in financial status of its inhabitants, who levitated between the East and the West. The social system prevented investments of any surplus money aimed at making bigger profits, and in the socio-economic discourse that did not require this, urbanized strata gradually developed the relatively remarkable consumer awareness, which represented the socialist reinterpretation of the consumer society in the West. At the same time, the idea of the consumer-based society slowly but surely penetrated the rural segment of the society and contributed to the declared purpose, and that was the destruction of the peasantry. Key moments after the death of Tito, and the beginnings of the transformation of the Yugoslav society, which, therefore, includes Serbia, began to appear even in the early eighties, which is primarily related to the possibility of increasing private ownership and the introduction of private entrepreneurship beyond the strict control of the socialist bureaucracy. The first period of the transition process was characterized by a high level of spontaneity and vagueness, and a certain degree of liberalization. Moreover, in 1990 already, it seemed that all the existing problems were the minor ones and that with a reform-oriented government, the country might really join the European Economic Community in 1992. However, blinded by the sudden increase in enticing selection of goods from the West, enjoying the benefits of the consumer society, one "subversive" process remained unnoticed that slowly formed a sufficiently broad stratum of people who place the model of conflict far above the model of interhuman cooperation, people who see an epic battle as an archetype of substance and more important than the peacefulness and tolerance, and that led Serbia to wars in the nineties – at the time of the final disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia.  The use of plastics, symbolic communication and cultural meanings marked the development, prosperity and, unfortunately, disintegration of Yugoslavia. Since it is impossible to even enumerate all of the products for interpretation of the culture of plastics, the necessary, arbitrary, and, in any event, good choice has been made by the "leopard fur” model that, by shedding light on the important symbols speaks of the entire cultural environment. In this discourse, the first post-war period was conducive to the publicly unrecognized social institution - the black market, or smuggling, where nylon stockings should be singled out as the then civilization icon. Placed at the symbolic level of communication, nylon stockings bridged the gap between the civil stratum of a gentlewoman, the desired status model of dress code, and a comrade woman, the model of equal women with the uniform dress code. Essentially, nylon stockings speak about then and now, capitalism and socialism, civil society and “leveling” (egalitarianism). The freedom of movement in the sixties and initial opening towards the world, gradual disappearance of barriers to market diffusion and strengthening of domestic industry, as well as the institutionalization of semi-legal smuggling channels, indirectly point to new forms of extrication from egalitarianism. At the time, the post-war ideological slogan "Trieste Belongs to Us" became correct in terms of the market, and, in a sense, Trieste became the ultimate spot of the smuggling pilgrimage: jeans, plastic raincoats, nylon stockings (again!), perlon shirts, plastic dolls that can close their eyes and say: "Mum", and many more. The desirable and the then available foreign merchandise - in the light of communication-symbolic relations – showed even in the examples of nylon stockings, plastic raincoats and perlon shirts that for many, that social period reflected a desirable yet unexperienced model of existence, and marked the designed plastics as a specific status symbol. Moreover, in the seventies, the process continued, so that the gastarbeiters and urbanized middle class marked the last "truly socialist" years through some kind of upstart-snobbish cultural expressions. An example of this is the decorative, realistic plastic fruits and vegetables brought from countries of temporary residence. With the exception of technical equipment, cars, toys and chewing gums, clothing, footwear, and others, as a " gastarbeiters’ jump" to the preferred model, it has special significance as a symbolic break with the countryside, alienation from home culture, takeover of new, foreign models of existence and, ultimately, undermining of the socialist system of values. A match for such a parvenu symbol would be a souvenir Venetian gondola, which, for members of the then middle class, expressed the status of the tangible evidence of leisure opportunities otherwise strange to the working people - comrades and comrade women. At the same time, the gondola had a symbolic meaning of the "shopping experience" as a substitute for the real social and cultural status.  The eighties were characterized by the existence of the seemingly polarized forces: (1) interactive opening to foreign markets, with the function, in terms of meaning, of proving the quality of the socialist self-management system, (2) increasingly more intensive economic disintegration of the economic texture of the Yugoslav social-state model of functioning. In the field of production, markets and the use of plastics, it reflected through the position of the former Yugoslavia as a regional touristic power and manufacturing of products primarily intended for tourists, as well as institutionalization of the so-called small-sized entrepreneurs in Serbia, a new social class including operations of (mostly) family plants for production of plastic goods. At the same time, this was the period of actualization of black and gray markets, which, as of the second part of the eighties, represented a constant multiple “black variant” of the free flow of goods from the clearing political-socio-economic area of the states behind the Iron Curtain. The swan song of great economic systems and the ascent of new social groups, as well as a slow yet inevitable process of the establishment of unrecognized flea markets, open shopping centers, kiosks and other commercial facilities, personifying the gray economy of the eighties and “brightly shining" during the international isolation and the crisis years, inevitably pointed to the weaknesses and inconsistencies in the socialist Yugoslavia as a model for the state of the future.  In the light of the generality of hyper-consumption, founded according to the then (and even current) cultural performances in the materialness, one-timeness, expendability and simplified pragmatism of plastics, the plastic nineties clearly communicate the mimicry-founded idea of normality, creating actually a whole complex of cultural meanings which deny objective reality at the symbolic level. The first of these would be the role of plastics as cheap and broadly available symbolic “crutches” to overcome existential hardship ideologized in the schizoid communication of the then state-social regime, anathemizing European countries and the United States, while, on the other hand, buying social peace through the allowed smuggling of products from those very countries. The other side is the fact that numerous Chinese products arrived in the Serbian market, burdened with the consequences of international isolation. Anathema and media-promoted view of China as one of the few friendly countries, speak about a publicly unexpressed, but symbolically contextualized division of the goods into the good and the bad plastics.  The second level of the meaning is a special way of interpretation of plastics, formed and represented through the use of plastic toys, which were, for various reasons, purchased by members of all social classes. Dangerous replicas of classic children's toys, primarily Lego games, and then variations of Barbie dolls and their sets, point, even at first glance, to the scale of the cultural-socio-economic destruction of everyday life and attitudes towards children. Also, no matter whether these are smuggled Chinese "originals" or recognizable replicas of dolls of super heroes - toys based on the model from the comics and films, they speak of cultural inversion: the ideologically encouraged division into the good and the bad markets and the fact that these children's cultural heroes are mostly shaped and mythologized within the popular culture of the "enemies of the Serbian people", while, paradoxically, coming from "friendly China” as the completed cultural meaning.   The third and the last level, and recapitulation of cultural communication during the plastic nineties, eventually focused on the secondary use of plastic bottles. As a materialized focus of the symbolic communication, during the inflation and post- inflation years, it pointed to the possession of money for pleasure beyond the basic existence. At the same time, with the separation of the specific secondary use into the urban and the rural ones, it turned out that bottles in the city more frequently retained their original purpose, or became one-time tools, while the use of plastic bottles in the country pointed (and still points) to the main filament of the maximal utilization and practical use inherited from the times of traditional communities.   |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
