Center for Culture and Cultural Studies Site devoted to Cultural Studies Researches
The conference, which was organized by Diskurs, and supported by Center for Culture and Cultural Studies, aims to bring together researchers and scholars of all disciplines – arts, media and communication, history, philosophy, literary studies etc. to reflect on the issue of the representation of the Holocaust in arts and media and their impact on collective memory.
The conference is an attempt to map the corpus of texts and to recognize their function in the construction of the multi-directional memories of the Balkan past. Furthermore, insight will be offered into the institution of memories in current media and arts texts in the Balkans. Encouragement and affirmation of the culture of memories, through media and art-related texts, are an important step in the preservation of tolerance and stability in the region.
In the years of World War II, many concentration camps were established throughout Europe, in which both political and ideological opponents were detained and killed. A number of these camps were located on Balkan soil; the biggest concentration camps were established in occupied Yugoslavia: Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška, Sajmište (Zemun), Banjica (Belgrade), Crveni krst (Niš), Jadovno (Gospić); in Romania: camps in Transnistria, in Greece: Haidari (Athens), etc.
The conference hopes to inspire international dialogue in order to raise the awareness about the importance of the Remembrance of the Holocaust as a symbol of suffering in the Balkan region
The conference organizers are happy to confirm that we hosted the panelist from Macedonia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France and Serbia.
Alongside the conference, five movies from ex-Yugoslav cinematography were shown as well as an art exhibition displaying the work of artist Miloš Bajić (1915-1995) showcasing his drawings and paintings. Bajić was an inmate in concentration camps Mauthausen and Banjica, and afterwards became professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade.
A copy of the conference programme can be viewed here.
