/ 1968

GIFT-COLLECTIONS OF THE GALLERY OF MATICA SRPSKA AS A MODEL FOR CHERISHING LEGACIES

GIFT-COLLECTIONS OF THE GALLERY OF MATICA SRPSKA AS A MODEL FOR CHERISHING LEGACIES

/ 1968

TRIVO INĐIĆ (1938–2020)

/ 1968

OLIVIA DE HAVILEND (1916–2020)

/ 1968

TOWARDS CULTURAL REVIVAL

/ 1968

THE ROLE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN THE DIGITAL MEDIA CULTURE AND STENGHTENING OF DIGITAL IMMUNITY

The public health emergency and the proclaimed state of the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus have led to the biggest world crisis since World War II. With the introduction of quarantine measures in spring 2020, the digital transformation has accelerated in many societies and the importance of media and information literacy in these new circumstances has been clearly emphasized. The pandemic has changed the information and media habits of the citizens, work from home was introduced, online school classes became mandatory, and an uprise of e-commerce reflected the new reality. The digital space has become oversaturated with informative, educational, commercial contents and many cultural institutions and international organizations have made their cultural heritage accessible online. Interaction in the public digital space has became more and more intense, and critical thinking stood out as a necessity for strengthening the digital immunity of each individual as well as the society. The pandemia was followed by infodemia. The information channels used by citizens point to a certain re-examination of the new digital media culture, the very concept of media as well as the accompanying regulations and media policy. The findings of the paper draw attention to the media and information literacy policy framework in Serbia, and review a set of activities that the Ministry of Culture and Media has been conducting over the past two years on both national and international level. It describes the correlation between the framework and the practice and depicts the trends in the international policy in this field. The paper focuses on the strategic vision and provides information throughout the two year period on setting up of the holistic 360 approach and setting up media literacy network of stakeholders with the aim of strengthening advocacy and developing of the media literacy field.

/ 1968

DOES CULTURAL PARTICIPATION MAKE US HAPPIER?

Research on the contribution of leisure activities in general and specifically cultural participation to personal wellbeing represents a relatively new and promising line of research. Results, however, are mixed – partly due to various definitions and measures of key variables, as well as their complexity and many confounding variables. This research was conducted on a sample representative for the general population of Serbia (N=1521). As potential predictors of wellbeing, we investigated a number of socio-demographic variables (gender, age, education level, employment status, financial status), subjective health status, and a list of leisure activities selected based on past research from leisure and cultural participation paradigms. A principal component analysis revealed six latent dimensions of leisure activities that were labeled as:1) cultural participation (in a strict sense), 2) movies & entertainment,3) folk & family, 4) outdoor activities, 5) sport, 6) e-books & e-news. A stepwise linear regression showed that subjective happiness was best predicted by a higher subjective health status, higher financial status, and higher education level, while from the domain of leisure activities, significant positive predictors were ‘folk & family’, ‘outdoor activities’, and ‘cultural participation’ components. Results are discussed in light of the complexity of examined phenomena, as well as practical implications for policy decision making.

/ 1968

TALKABLE THINGS

One of today’s most influential definitions of the concept of the work of art comes from the American philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto. Danto says, in order to be a work of art, an artefact must (1) be about something and (2) embody its meaning. Many authors have criticized this definition, one of those being Noël Carroll, who gives examples of objects that are not works of art but meet the requirements of Danto’s definition. One possible answer to this criticism is offered in this essay. It offers an understanding of the objects from Carroll’s examples (and similar objects) as aesthetized, i.e. specifically shaped to partially cause an aesthetic reaction. Taking this into account, the entire area of human productivity is shown as a continuum within which some objects carry “more” or “less” aesthetic quality

/ 1968

ANCESTRESSES AND FEMALE LEGACY IN MARIJANA ČANAK’S FOREMOTHERS

Using the term “gynocriticism”, coined by Elaine Showalter fifty years ago, and other critical practices which explore the creativity of women, the paper sets out to explore continuity of women’s narratives about experience, change, happiness and misfortune represented in the second book of stories by Marijana Čanak. Her collection of stories, titled Pramatere easily translated as “Foremothers”, delves deep into the lives of several generations of women who fight against the shortcomings of their respective lives, and struggle to keep the legacy of their grandmothers and mothers alive. Marijana Čanak focuses on the aims gynocriticism has defined as the most important, such as the objective to change the male-oriented literary heritage and to focus on the lives of women who have been silenced, marginalized and neglected.

/ 1968

SONDERKOMMANDO PHOTOGRAPHS AS A DISOBEDIENT ACT OF SEEING

In his book Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, Didi-Huberman indicates that the four photographs in question were taken as a counterweight or in spite of something. They show the activities of the Sonderkommando, whose task was to escort other Jews into gas chambers, as well as to dispose and burn the corpses that were left behind. In the dual role of the victim and the perpetrator, members of this unit, in spite of the ban and the danger they were in, had created four photographs showing their own activities inside the camp. Throughout the work, different modes of being in spite of characteristic of the aforementioned photographs are separated and explained with regard to whether they relate to the need for, production or reception of photographs. They were created in spite of, but also based on, the inconceivability of the situation they portray (photographs as evidence), in spite of the prohibition of photographs (obstacle in production) and in spite of the representational framework or representability of humans obstacle in reception. Inconceivability brings us to the notions of evidence, truth, but also power, representability, prohibition and rules. Based on the representability of the photographs and the notion of cultural memory, we considered the possibilities of the photographs representing Judith Butler’s disobedient act of seeing. It will be shown that an emergence in spite of as Didi-Huberman would say, or a disobedient act of seeing in Judith Butler’s words, is readable more through the way the images are made, than through what they depict. Unlike the usual “allowed” war photographs, they are specific proofs of the prohibition against which they are made.