International symposium Ljubljana, 18-19 May 2015

Programme committee

Božidar Jezernik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia (chair of the programme committee)István Povedák, MTA-SZTE Research Group for the Study of Religious Culture, HungaryIvan Čolović, Biblioteka XX vek, SerbiaJurij Fikfak, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, SloveniaTomislav Pletenac, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Slovenia

Organising committeeDan Podjed, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia (chair of the organising committee)Marjana Strmčnik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, SloveniaSara Špelec, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, SloveniaSaša Babič, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia

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Introduction

Persons - and things - shining out of a grey reality

Daniel J. Boorstin defined the celebrity as ‘a person who is known for his well-knownness.’ In this symposium we try to pinpoint such famous individuals within Central and South-eastern Europe, and analyse the foundations of their fame.The symposium focuses on several thematic streams and draws parallels between them. For example, it looks into how man-agers, politicians, and economists, from the past and present, must constantly re-create their public appearance. It spotlights artists, i.e. musicians, film-makers, and sculptors, who appear in prominent public events and make their fame also through staged ‘pseudo-events.’ It introduces the fame of athletes, whom are applauded when they stand on a podium with a medal, yet often ridiculed when they fall from a highly established posi-tion. It is also interested in outstanding scholars who managed to build their central place both inside and outside academia, through ‘front-stage’ appearances and ‘back-stage’ activities, each being of similar importance. Finally, the symposium rais-es a question if a celebrity is necessarily a person and brings attention to non-living things, including vehicles.

The symposium does not focus only on contemporary celebri-ties; it includes individuals of the past who used various strate-gies – appropriate to their time period and socio-cultural en-vironment – to stand out from the crowd. It tries to establish how their fame and celebrity status have transformed and how some of them managed to achieve a heroic status in society.

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Schedule

9:30-9:45 Welcome coffee 9:45-10:00 Introductory speech10:00-10:30 KEYNOTE LECTURE: Ivan Čolović

Paths of glory: How people from the margins grab the attention of the nation

10:30-11:00 István PovedákRomani celebrities in Hungarian mass media

11:00-11:30 Dan PodjedSuperstar Yugo: Making a celebrity out of the worst car in the world

11:30-12:00 Tomislav PletenacWhen a waiter became a celebrity: War as a reality show

12:00-14:00 Lunch break14:00-14:30 Svanibor Pettan

The notion of celebrity in art music14:30-15:00 Alenka Bartulović, Miha Kozorog

‘Sevdah’ celebrities in contemporary Bosnia-Herzegovina: Challenging narrations about ‘sevdalinka

Location: Where is the stage?

On Monday, 18 May 2015, the symposium will take place in the Prešeren Hall of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Novi trg 4, Ljubljana).On Tuesday, 19 May 2015, the event will be held in the Geography Museum Hall of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana) - near the Križanke Outdoor Theatre.

Monday, 18 May 2015

Schedule: Who is in the spotlight?

Venue: SAZU Prešeren Hall (Novi trg 4, Ljubljana)

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15:00-15:30 Ana HofmanThe false glitter of fame: Folk singers, celebrity culture and gender in a post-Yugoslav context

15:30-16:00 Coffee break16:00-16:30 Simona Vidmar

Heroes we love: Socialist realism revised16:30-17:00 Tatiana Bajuk Senčar

Typology of celebrity economists

Tuesday, 19 May 2015Venue: ZRC SAZU Geography Museum Hall (Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana)

9:30-10:00 Welcome coffee10:00-10:30 Božidar Jezernik

Ivan Zajec (1869–1952) 10:30-11:00 Peter Simonič

Vladimir Rukavina: A cultural manager and master of sponsorship

11:00-11:30 Marjana StrmčnikCommander Stane

11:30-12:00 Sara ŠpelecThe image of Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Slovenian newspapers

12:00-14:30 Lunch break*14:30-15:00 Saša Babič

Petra Majdič: A Slovenian sports heroine15:00-15:30 Boštjan Videmšek, Matjaž Pograjc Rok’s depth15:30-16:00 Debate and conclusion

* During the lunch break, a discussion on ethnographic writing will be held at the fair of academic books Liber.ac. It will take place in a nearby park, next to the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts (Aškerčeva cesta 2, Ljubljana). The debate will be moderated by Dr Božidar Jezernik and joined by Dr Ivan Čolović (Biblioteka XX vek).

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Abstracts

Ivan ČolovićBiblioteka XX vek

Paths of glory: How people from the margins grab the attention of the nation

A time of great political crises and wars can offer people from the margins an opportunity to surface and attract pub-lic attention. Such examples of promotion were numerous in Yugoslavia during the 1990s, when war raged in the former country. Many of them still exist, as consequences of the con-flict continue to destabilize the region. Marginalized individ-uals rose to fame and still do so in several ways. One way was by participating in the war. Many criminals and ‘dogs of war’ took this path and became war heroes or, if nothing more, at least known among the people. Another way open to am-bitious individuals was politics, where they could serve po-litical elites and their leaders, who were involved in the war. Many without scruples used this path to claw their way out of anonymity, assume political functions, and stand in the lights of the regime’s media. The media themselves presented the third option by offering a convenient way for mediocre but ambitious journalists to become the main distributors of the nationalist and war propaganda of the 90s. A similar path was the commitment to ‘our thing’ in culture, which enabled the ascent of a large number of marginalized artists and intel-lectuals. During the war it soon became evident that even the world of sport, especially the world of sports fans or support-ers, can be well-suited for the promotion of people from the lowest social depths, even in times of war and crisis, and it is this world that has changed the least since then. Ivan Čolović, born in 1938 in Belgrade, is an ethnologist and a political anthropologist. He is the founder (1971), editor, and publisher (since 1988) of the series Biblioteka XX vek.

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His works include: Divlja književnost (1983), Bordel ratnika (1993), Politika simbola (1997), Etno (2006), Balkan – teror kulture (2008), Za njima smo išli pevajući (2011), Rastanak sa identitetom (2014). His books have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Macedonian, Polish, and Greek. The honors he has received include the Herder Prize (2000), the Medal of the Legion of Honor (2001), an honor-ary doctorate from the University of Warsaw (2010), and the Konstantin Jireček Medal (2012) E: ivcol@eunet.rs.

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Abstracts

István PovedákMTA-SZTE Research Group for the Study of Religious Culture

Romani celebrities in Hungarian mass media

It is a well-known fact in contemporary cultural research that the identity, models of behavior, way of thinking, and world-view of the upcoming generations are being determined ever more strongly by the various mass media, the information they supply, and the personalities they feature. Celebrities have functioned powerfully as points of orientation. They have an increasing role in forming public opinion and in af-fecting identity (individual and social alike) in contemporary society. The images of certain political actions, religions, or ethnic groups in the wider society are greatly dependent on the way they are represented in mass media. Thus, either positive or negative stereotypes of the portrayed group can evolve. Celebrities are more than just persons who are sim-ply known for their well-knownness; they have deeper sig-nificance. Through their acts, opinion, and image, they can function as orientation points for the society, similarly to historical heroes. On the basis of Hungarian research data, this paper aims to analyze how Romani exemplary figures are represented in mass media and how their representation correlates with the stereotypical image of Romani in the wider society. What sort of actions and attitudes might develop from the symbol-ic content of their image? How does their figure help evoke the group’s ethnic and national identities, and how does their image help their integration into society?

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István Povedák is a research fellow at the MTA-SZTE Re-search Group for the Study of Religious Culture (Szeged, Hungary). He studied History, Ethnology, and Religious Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary, and holds a PhD from ELTE University, Budapest, for which he wrote his dissertation titled Heroes and Celebrities. He is interested in the contemporary cult of heroes and celebrities, vernacu-lar religiosity, and the mingling of neo-nationalism, Chris-tianity, and neopaganism. He published numerous articles on these topics, including the books Heroes and Celebrities in Central- and Eastern Europe and Álhősök, hamis istenek? Hős-és sztárkultusz a posztmodern korban (Pseudo-Heroes, Fake Gods? The Cult of Heroes and Celebrities in Postmoder-nity). He is the head of the Ethnology of Religion Working Group of the International Society for Ethnology and Folk-lore (SIEF) and of the Network for the Research of Modern Mythology (MoMiMű). E: povedakistvan@gmail.com.

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Abstracts

Dan PodjedResearch Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Superstar Yugo: Making a celebrity out of the worst car in the world

Q: How do you double the value of a Yugo? A: Fill the tank with gasoline! (If it can still hold liquid.)

This is one out of the dozens of jokes that exist about Yugo, a car made in Yugoslavia by the company Zastava. The vehi-cle used to be a popular mean of passenger transport in the former socialist country. It was exported to other markets, including the US, where it was introduced in the mid-1980s as a solid and affordable car. Its overseas success was enabled by a smart advertising campaign, initiated by the entrepre-neur Malcolm Bricklin, who managed to turn an unreliable and unattractive vehicle into an instant celebrity and sales hit. The dark times for the Yugo started in the late 1980s, when automobile journals and other media began to use the car as a source of ridicule and labelled it as ‘the worst car of the millennium,’ as attractive as the ‘political system that exported it.’ Due to bad press and new competitors entering the market, the initial success of the Yugo as an export prod-uct gradually declined. Nevertheless, Zastava kept producing the vehicle. Yugos kept being built long after Yugoslavia dis-solved; it was not until 2008 that the last of almost 800,000 vehicles rolled off the assembly lines in Kragujevac.

Even though the Yugo is no longer being produced, it re-mains an international target of ridicule and the subject of numerous jokes. It has also become a source of inspiration and pride for many of its owners who try to improve the vehicle and redesign its appearance. Such shiny ‘celebrity Yugos’ can be seen on the streets, at car shows, and even at

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racing competitions. This paper puts a special focus on one such car, which was tuned up by Slovenian enthusiasts and entered into the San Marino international racing event Rally Legends. The Yugo, which managed to overtake the ‘brutal Lancias’ during the race, was later put in the media spotlight and its engineers and mechanics were celebrated as ‘national heroes.’

Dan Podjed is a research fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU), an assistant professor for Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana, and a researcher at the telemat-ics solution provider CVS Mobile. Dr Podjed is the princi-pal investigator of the applied research project DriveGreen: Development of an Eco-driving Application for a Transition to a Low-carbon Society (2014–2017). He chairs the Applied Anthropology Network of the European Association of So-cial Anthropologists (EASA), which initiated the annual in-ternational symposium Why the world needs anthropologists (Amsterdam 2013, Padua 2014, Ljubljana 2015). In 2011 his book on birdwatching, Observing the Observers, was declared as an exceptional scientific achievement by the Slovenian Re-search Agency. His current research interests include driving habits, human-technology interaction, and environmental protection. E: dan.podjed@zrc-sazu.si.

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Abstracts

Tomislav PletenacUniversity of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

When a waiter became a celebrity: War as a reality show One of the main features of celebrity (especially after the 1980s) has been the blurring of the difference between private and public. Private life has become a new source and, after the year 2000, perhaps the only source for producing celeb-rity status (today’s celebrities are well known for being well-known). In the case of the singer Marko Perković Thompson, the differences were blurred in unexpected way. His private life is constructed around the topics and values that he sings about, which helps him produce something I like to call ‘the reality effect.’ After the war, as time passed, the circumstances in society did not meet the expectations that people had dur-ing the war. The war itself became just a memory occasionally mentioned in the media. Veterans and the people whose lives were radically changed during the war get the feeling that the war never happened or that its ‘true values’ were betrayed (as many of them claim). However, to use Baudrillard claim, it never happened – it has always been a media product; what was real during the war has become impossible to represent without it resulting in another ‘betrayal’. What Thompson does is a reenactment of the war context. He offers to his fans a place for an active imagination that is suggestive of the war. Thompson produced enemies (Antichrists and masons / Communists and such / Spreading satanist phrases / To defeat us / Oh, my people!) in order to keep the war context active. In this way, he brings back the reality of the war and, through his ‘private’ appearance, represents himself as an eternal war-rior. As war helped him achieve his popularity (he became a star thanks to a war song), he uses such methods to also maintain his popularity and media presence.

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Tomislav Pletenac is an associated professor at the Depart-ment of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. His interests lie in postcolonial theory, psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and genocide studies. Specific topics of his research include the history of ethnology in Southeastern Europe, na-tionalism, vampires in popular culture, and the Srebrenica genocide. He teaches Theories in Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography in Popular Culture, Postcolonialism and Gen-der, and the Cultures of Postsocialism. E: tpletena@ffzg.hr.

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Abstracts

Svanibor PettanUniversity of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

The notion of celebrity in art music The notion of celebrity in common perception is nowadays, for the most part, associated with the realm of popular cul-ture, of which popular music is an essentially important seg-ment. Art music, which refers to the music for the propor-tionally small elites in various spatial and temporal contexts, has its own heroes in compositional, performance, or joint domains. This presentation takes a close look at celebrities in the sociocultural frameworks of European and Indian art music, pointing to notions such as inborn talent, connec-tions with national and broader regional and cultural roots, invention, virtuosity, and personal charisma. A comparative analysis points not only to the specifics and differences of being a celebrity within each of these two major art music traditions – subject to change in time – but also to the conse-quences of their encounters. There is an unquestionable po-tential of intercultural and historical approaches to art music in interpreting and understanding the meaning of celebrity here and now. Svanibor Pettan is a full professor and the chair of Ethno-musicology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. After earning his academic degrees in Croatia, Slovenia, and the USA respectively, he developed an intense array of inter-national activities (research, publication, lecturing, editorial work, supervision). He currently serves as the president of the Cultural and Ethnomusicological Society Folk Slovenia and as the secretary general of the International Council for Traditional Music. His principal research interests include: music, politics, and war; multiculturalism; music and minor-ities; anthropology of music; and applied ethnomusicology. E: svanibor.pettan@guest.arnes.si.

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Abstracts

Alenka Bartulović, Miha KozorogUniversity of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

‘Sevdah’ celebrities in contemporary Bosnia-Herzegovina: Challenging narrations about ‘sevdalinka’ During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ‘sevdalinka’ appeared as an important and ideologically manipulated musical genre. It has been used in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as in refugee and diasporic communities to represent various ideological positions and visions of identity and future. In a Bosnian con-text it often became used in nationalistic discourses, where ‘sevdalinka’ was celebrated as part of the national, mainly Bos-niak heritage. After the war, new appropriations of this tra-ditional music-poetic form emerged in the post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. Young performers, e.g. Damir Imamović, Amira Medunjanin, and Božo Vrećo simultaneously reaffirmed this musical genre and imposed it with new meanings. Thus, they are well known for their dedication to the traditional music form, while on the other hand, they are also known for crea-tively engaging with it and for modifying how it is performed. Yet, by gaining a respected status of ‘celebrities’ in an interna-tional ‘world music’ milieu, they have also been able to decon-struct the dominant narratives about ‘sevdalinka’ and accom-panying conservative ideologies. Alenka Bartulović published the monograph ‘We’re not One of You!’: Antinationalism in Post-war Sarajevo in 2013. She cur-rently works as a researcher and substitute lecturer in the study programme Ethnology of the Balkans. Her research interests include (anti)nationalism, memory, the anthropology of hope, agricultural anthropology, gender, and generational relations. E: alenka.bartulovic@ff.uni-lj.si.

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Miha Kozorog published his second monograph, Festival Places: Concepts, Policies and Hope on the Periphery, in 2013. His research interests include tourism, place-making, and popular culture. E: miha.kozorog@ff.uni-lj.si.

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Abstracts

Ana HofmanResearch Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

The false glitter of fame: Folk singers, celebrity culture, and gender in a post-Yugoslav context The paper discusses celebrity culture and transformations in the construction of the figure of a star, analyzing female performers of newly-composed folk music (NCFM). In Yu-goslavia, as controversial public personas, these performers symbolized both socialist women and capitalist entertain-ers, working people and ‘stars.’ Because they were associated with the ‘lowbrow’ genre of NCFM, they were often ascribed immorality, shamelessness, devaluation, and disrespect – not in accordance with the moral economy associated with the socialist femininity. Therefore, the self-performances, agency, representations, and choices of NFCM singers were constantly under public surveillance. They became subjects that had to publicly legitimize themselves as valuable and respectful individuals. Drawing on recent writings about ce-lebrity culture and on the concept ‘celebrity capital,’ the paper focuses particularly on the discourses on the visual appear-ance, the politics of body and dressing. The paper presents NCFM stars as an important vehicle through which Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav social realities, as well as imaginations and fantasies, were channeled. They are examined as the em-bodiment of the social play, which can lead to more nuanced thinking about the politics of belonging and social stratifica-tions in socialist Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav societies. Ana Hofman is a research fellow at the Institute for Culture and Memory Studies of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts in Ljubljana, and a lecturer at the Faculty of Hu-manities, University of Nova Gorica. Her research specializes in music and sound in socialism and postsocialism, gender,

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memory politics, applied ethnomusicology, and neoliberal-ism – all in the context of the former Yugoslavia. She has published a number of articles and book chapters related to music and politics in socialist Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav societies. In 2011 she published the book Staging Socialist Femininity: Gender Politics and Folklore Performances in Ser-bia. In 2015 she published a book about the afterlife of parti-san songs in Slovenia, titled Music, Politics, Affect: Afterlife of Partisan Songs in Slovenia. E: ahofman@zrc-sazu.si.

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Abstracts

Simona VidmarMaribor Art Gallery

Heroes we love: Socialist realism revised The exhibition Heroes We Love, presented at the Maribor Art Gallery, enters a controversial field of socialist heroic art in order to identify and acknowledge those protagonists who brought the monumental art of the preset political landscape to its peak. It is interested in the iconography of socialist re-alism in all its mighty, heroic realizations; in its sentiments, repartee, and feeling of drama, its large-scale commissions and more. It wishes to understand how far revolutionary romanticism went, from what and where it drew, and how it imploded into itself. Monuments as constructions of time and space simplify and fabricate a particular history. Wal-ter Benjamin wrote that ‘there has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism.’ Simi-larly, the monuments of socialist realism too bear witness to recent culture – and barbarism. It is time to recognize them!

Five selected examples of socialist realism drawn from the re-gion of former Yugoslavia formed the initial central concept of the exhibition: the Soviet-inspired Monument to the Red Army Fighters by Croatian sculptor Antun Augustinčić, the heroic mural The Fight of Yugoslav Nations for Freedom and Renewal of the Country by painter Slavko Pengov, the monu-mental figural character of the Monument to Resistance and Torment by sculptor Lojze Dolinar, the double relief of the Tomb of the Liberators of Belgrade by Serbian sculptor Rade Stanković, and the unrealized Monument to Marx and En-gels by Croatian sculptor Vojin Bakić. These five examples cover all of the major narratives of socialist art: resistance, suffering, victory, builders, and the cult of personality; and follow the formal development of the visual language of so-

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cialist realism: from the strict imitation of Soviet examples to simplifications and investigations into plasticity. Simona Vidmar gained a MA in Art History in Graz, Aus-tria, and a MA in Arts Management in London, UK. After curating numerous exhibitions of Slovene and international visual art, she is now head of the Department for Contempo-rary Art at Umetnostna galerija Maribor/Maribor Art Gal-lery in Slovenia. Her interest lies mainly in the field of instal-lation and new media art, design, and architecture. Currently she is leading an international, EU-funded project Heroes We Love, which deals with socialist-era heritage in Eastern Eu-rope with an aim to connect the past to the future. She has also been appointed commissioner of the Pavilion of the Re-public of Slovenia at the 56th Venice Biennial International Art Exhibition. E: simona.vidmar@ugm.si.

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Abstracts

Tatiana Bajuk SenčarResearch Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Typology of celebrity economists The value accorded to the economic sphere is self-evident and often unquestioned, with economic interests often being presumed to inform the activities of actors at all levels, from those of nation-states to those of individuals. Economics as a valued form of knowledge is purported to be based on the examination, study, and application of universal economic laws of behavior – all of which grants economists, the practi-tioners of this knowledge, a special social status. This presentation focuses on a group of economists who, as individuals, stand apart from other economists because they are exceedingly well-known: celebrity economists. Although the term ‘celebrity economist’ is relatively recent, the cate-gory of social actor is not; in addition, celebrity economists differ across cultures and societies. The author elaborates a typology of celebrity economists, focusing on the nature of their distinction, the roots of their celebrity, their spheres of operation, and the forms of authority that they exercise as a result of their celebrity, often outside their realm of expertise. Tatiana Bajuk Senčar, a cultural anthropologist, is a re-searcher at the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology of the Re-search Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her initial research focused on the role of economists in Slovenia’s transition process. Her other research interests include the anthropology of tourism and sustainable devel-opment, with a focus on heritage and, more recently, on sus-tainable mobility. She has conducted research on European integration and the construction of a transnational, Europe-

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an identity, and recently authored a book titled European In-tegration as Cultural Practice: The First Generation of Slovene Eurocrats. E: tatiana.bajuk@zrc-sazu.si.

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Abstracts

Božidar JezernikUniversity of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

Ivan Zajec (1869–1952)

Ivan Zajec studied at an academy in Vienna, where he was one of the best students. He was awarded the Füger’s medal (1894) for his sculpture The Frightened Satyre. In 1896 he made a sculpture of Adam and Eve in a classical style, and a sculpture in marble of a female binding her sandals, which he dedicated to Michelangelo Buonarroti. After finishing his studies, he worked in the atelier of the Viennese sculptor Theodore Friedl, and in Munich, where he studied the ‘gran-diose’ masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture in its museums and glyptotheques. In 1899 he travelled to Italy and opened his own atelier in Vienna, where he made important statues with allegorical, mythological, and genre content. During his stay in Paris (1906–1909) he paid a visit to London (1906) and the United States (1907). In 1909 he returned to Ljublja-na, then moved from Ljubljana to Trieste (in 1912) and to Rome (in 1913), where he drew for archaeologists and made copies in the Vatican museums. During the Great War he was interned in Sardinia (1915–1919). After the War he re-turned to Ljubljana and continued as a sculptor and teacher until 1940. His best-known work is the monument of France Prešeren in Ljubljana. When it was solemnly inaugurated, in 1905, the monument was the subject of fierce criticism, given most loudly by Ivan Cankar, who claimed that Zajec (meaning ‘rabbit’) was the most humble Slovenian sculptor and that cowardice (or ‘zajčevstvo’) would survive for long time after the sculptor was gone. Zajec also took part in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, in the Art Competition. At almost 55 years of age, he was the oldest Olympian to repre-sent Yugoslavia. In 1950 he received the Prešeren Award for his lifetime achievements.

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Božidar Jezernik is a full professor of Cultural Anthropol-ogy at the University of Ljubljana. He teaches Ethnology of the Balkans and has conducted extensive field work in East-ern and Southeastern Europe. He was the head of the Depart-ment of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, from 1988 to 1992 and from 1998 to 2003, and the dean of the Faculty of Arts, Universi-ty of Ljubljana, from 2003 to 2007. He has been leading the program research group Slovenian Identities in European and Global Context since 2004, and heads the research project He-roes and Celebrities in Slovenia and Central Europe. bozidar.jezernik@ff.uni-lj.si.

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Abstracts

Peter SimoničUniversity of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

Vladimir Rukavina: A cultural manager and master of sponsorship In social sciences and humanities, it is only reasonable to characterize individuals by their relation to their respective or distant social environments. Vladimir Rukavina is one of the most important and steadfast figures of the post-socialist transition in Maribor. The Festival Lent, which he and his team have been organizing annually for more than twenty years now, is the biggest open air festival in Slovenia and one of the biggest in Europe. On the local level, the festival sym-bolizes a shift from an industrial society to an informational or service society. Rukavina, as a CEO, is one of the most important representatives of the new Slovenian managerial paradigm and of its integration with the cultural system. The author presents the public life and work of Rukavina over a longer period of time, with an emphasis on the am-bivalent attitudes that he provoked in the small Central Eu-ropean town. No matter what people may think of him, very few people in Maribor haven't heard of Rukavina, the mas-ter of the great festivity in the times of a diminishing urban economy and community. Peter Simonič is an assistant lecturer at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, Uni-versity of Ljubljana. His fields of expertise include political, economic, and ecological anthropology, and applied anthro-pology with cultural management. He has written exten-sively on protected areas, political rituals, human economies, cultural management, and contemporary political processes. E: peter.simonic@ff.uni-lj.si.

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Abstracts

Marjana StrmčnikUniversity of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

Commander Stane The author aims to present how the image of the people's hero of Yugoslavia, Franc Rozman – Stane, evolved since his death in 1943. Commander Stane, as he was known among his fellow partisans, was one of the most prominent figures of the Second World War in Slovenian territory. He was pre-sented as such for decades, whereas nowadays his legacy is questioned by some historians and political elites. How did the representations of the memory of his persona develop and change during these years? What was the influence of certain ideologies of the political elites? How was he used as a tool of legitimacy of those elites? How was his image used in the past and is still used today in the process of creating memory? Marjana Strmčnik holds a BA degree in Ethnology and Cul-tural Anthropology. Since 2013/14 she has been a postgradu-ate student at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, researching the Order of People's hero of Yugoslavia. She is employed as a research assistant at the Department of Eth-nology and Cultural Anthropology at the same Faculty. Her research interests include: anthropology of war, anthropolo-gy of body, the Balkans, socialism, postsocialism, and culture of memory. E: marjana.strmcnik@ff.uni-lj.si.

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Abstracts

Sara ŠpelecUniversity of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

The image of Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Slovenian newspapers

The paper presents the image of Alexander I of Yugoslavia that was conveyed by Slovenian newspapers during the pe-riod of his rule, and the ways in which his image changed over the years, especially after 1929, which was the year when he introduced a personal dictatorship. The paper focuses on the predominant discourse in reports on the turning points of the kingdom and on events that were of great public and national importance, such as the foundation of the kingdom, elections, national holidays, Alexander’s marriage, the birth of his children, his relation to Slovenian people, the assas-sination of Stjepan Radić, the beginning of his dictatorship and, at the very end, his assassination. On these occasions, the importance of Alexander's figure had to be retold, ex-plained, and justified, and we can therefore conclude that the Slovenian press enabled or at least helped him to become a heroic figure and a star.

Sara Špelec holds a BA degree in Russian Language and Lit-erature and in Comparative Slavic Linguistics. Since 2012 she has been a postgraduate student, researching the life and rule of Alexander I of Yugoslavia. She is employed as a research assistant at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, De-partment of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. E: sara.spelec@ff.uni-lj.si

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Abstracts

Saša BabičResearch Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Petra Majdič: A Slovenian sports heroine

Petra Majdič is the most famous Slovenian cross-country skier. She was the third to cross the finish line in a classic sprint race at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, despite having sustained severe injuries. Even before this event, she was considered to be a remarkable athlete. This race, how-ever, raised her to the level of a heroine with super abilities. The media wrote about her and her sports story, and helped her become one of the most famous personalities in Slove-nia. Reporters emphasized her positive characteristics and put her on a pedestal alongside the biggest personalities in history, which was evident from newspaper headlines. This paper analyzes the newspaper articles published about Petra Majdič at the time of the 2010 Olympics, and shows how the media can build the personality of a hero on the basis of a single event through a specific discourse.

Sasa Babič is a folklorist at the Institute of Slovenian Eth-nology, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sci-ences and Arts. Her research interests include oral folklore, especially short folklore forms (greetings, curses, proverbs, riddles, charms, and prayers), as well as discursive analysis of different contemporary genres from everyday life (written texts in different contexts). E: sasa.babic@zrc-sazu.si.

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Abstracts

Boštjan Videmšek, Matjaž PograjcMladinsko Theatre

Rok's Depth Rok Petrovič is one of a very few Slovenian mythological he-roes and the only one of them that was – and is, here and now – real. King Matjaž is asleep and Kekec is an invention of a writer’s imagination. There is nobody else to turn to, which is why Rok’s story, albeit never really told or explored until now, was such a powerful identification point for at least two generations of Slovenians who spent the 1980s, which were both extreme and momentous in terms of skiing, politics, and social issues, looking for something to hold on to among the slippery and sharp rocks forming the overhang of history. With five victories and the maximum number of points scored during the cult 1985/86 ski season, Rok, a ski cham-pion, was the first Slovene – or, rather, Yugoslav – to become the overall slalom winner and receive the Small Crystal Globe. In the context of skiing, however, Rok, who was only nineteen at the time, was more than a serial winner. From one race to the next, from one training session to the next, and from one life experience to the next, like a slightly mad scientist, he kept puzzling out a new skiing technique, play-ing around with equipment, and experimenting with differ-ent approaches to training like no one before. The show called Rok’s Depth (Rokova modrina), which is being developed at the Mladinsko Theatre, is presented by the scriptwriter Boštjan Videmšek and the director Matjaž Pograjc.

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Boštjan Videmšek, the scriptwriter of Rok’s Depth, works as a veteran front-line reporter for Delo and as a contributor for numerous magazines. He is the author of three books and an avid athlete. E: bostjan.videmsek@gmail.com. Matjaž Pograjc, the director of Rok’s Depth, danced in a 1988 Red Pilot performance, Ballet Observatory Zenith. He passed the entrance exams at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana the following year and started the group Betontanc in 1990. His shows are featured regularly at festivals in Slovenia and abroad, and his work in theater has taken him to two hundred and fifty cities in forty-three countries on five continents, where he has also held several acting/movement workshops. He has been working for the Mladinsko Theatre since 1993. E: che_pograjc@yahoo.com.