An exhibition, or more precisely, a research project of the young visual artist Bojan Krištofić (1987) with the intriguing name "(Esthetics of Nationalism - Design for Turbo-Folk") was opened in Mixer House in Belgrade last week. As stated in the announcement for this event, the project "seeks to provide a complete insight into the folk subculture with an emphasis on the musical expression that was characteristic of the Serbian social context of the nineties and discovers its roots, since the beginnings of "newly composed" folk music in the former Yugoslavia in the fifties and the sixties. The exhibition follows the chronology of the development of design for turbo folk and shows it comparatively in the area of the region, whereby a special emphasis is placed on several performers, who contributed equally to the definition of turbo-folk with their music and visual identity, such as, for example, Svetlana Ceca Ražnatović, Severina, Indira Radić, Mile Kitić, Colonia (as an archetypal regional "dance" group), Dragana Mirković, Jelena Karleuša, Dino Merlin..."
RURAL URBAN: Unfortunately, the exhibition that can be seen these days in Mikser does not fulfill any of what the announcement promises. The author places the forerunner of turbo-folk in 1956, in the days when Silvana Barjaktarević, later Armenulić, discovered the still unestablished Toma Zdravković. Then, in 1969, the rise of turbo-folk was illustrated by the fact that Toma Zdravković achieved great success at the "Ilidža" festival, with the song "Odlazi, odlida", and along with the cover for this single, the author cites the complex cover for Arsen Dedić's album as a kind of antithesis. A man like me", designed by Mihajlo Arsovski. Already at the very beginning, especially if one takes into account that the exhibition also mentions the film by Živojin Pavlović "When I'm Dead and White" and the motif of the collision between the city and the countryside, it is clear that we are dealing with a worn-out "rural-urban" duality here. . The problem with this kind of division in the Balkans is, above all, that it is difficult to draw a line where one begins and the other ends. For example, for the pre-war citizenry, post-World War II migration was something to frown upon. Already the next generation of those "newcomers" frowned disdainfully at those who, for example, remained in the countryside. We will only stick to this common stereotype, and by the way, there are more. Second, making this type of division is never fair to either party. Or the author believes that perhaps Arsen Dedić looks at Toma Zdravković with scorn.
The biggest problem of the exhibition is that at no point does it manage to justify its own name, i.e. the explicit connection between turbo-folk, its aesthetics and nationalism. There is something here, from Lepa Brena and Slatki greha to Balvan revolution. It also has the famous cross-dressing phases of Oliver Mandić from the early eighties. Marko Perković Thompson is mentioned, as well as the creator of the term "turbo-folk" Rambo Amadeus. But there is no Oliver Mandić from the nineties, the one in camouflage uniform, on the battlefield, side by side with Željko Ražnatović Arkan. Bora Đorđević and Toni Montano are also missing. There are none, because they do not belong to turbo-folk. Therefore, the author had a preconceived thesis that the connection between turbo-folk and nationalism is self-evident, so he removed from the evidence for his thesis everything that could disprove it. The only solid proof of the thesis from the title is a photograph from the wedding of Svetlana Ceca Veličković, at that time already an established turbo-folk star, and Željko Ražnatović Arkan, at that time already an established war criminal.
WORLDWIDE, And OURS: The emphasis of the exhibition is on the aesthetic moment of turbo-folk, but we don't actually see it at any moment. However, we remember him, so something can be said about that too. Chains, wigs, black leather clothes, animal patterns, exaggerated make-up... In those years, this same aesthetic is characteristic of the so-called eurodens, on which turbo-folk relied heavily in its heyday. Besides, Radoslav Rodić Roki's funny hairstyle from the time of his big hit "Woman" (1991) is no funnier than Richard Marx's hairstyle from the time he recorded "Right Here Waiting" (1989). If we're being honest, even Rocky's ballad is much less sleazy than Marx's.
Taking us through the period from 1957 to today, the author sends a message that is completely contradictory to the name of the entire project. The last two exhibits inform us that the turbo-folk icon Jelena Karleush drew the ire of conservative currents by writing columns promoting LGBT and, in general, human rights. In addition, Hanka Paldum and Dragana Mirković recorded a duet and a music video. And in the video, one starts from Belgrade, the other from Sarajevo and they meet at the Old Bridge in Mostar. If the author had studied who was the first to "reconcile" after the local wars, he would have known that it was the Narodniks, and for the most honorable possible reasons. Not to expand the market, but because there was an audience waiting for them there, who had already listened to them in one way or another.
The author also makes one rather glaring material error. Namely, Severina's album "Hail Mary" from 2008, signed by Goran Bregović, is described as "Catholic intoned". If he had listened to only the title track, it would have been clear to him that he would have made less of a mistake if he had attached the epithet "satanic" to this album. To make sure there is no confusion, "Hail Mary" is neither that, but, if one must use an epithet, it is primarily a feminist and emancipatory album. After all, if he had been careful about what labels he applied to what, the author of the project would never have added the term "subculture" to turbo-folk, since from start to finish it is a mainstream phenomenon within mass culture.
The biggest mistake of all previous attempts, including this one, to treat the phenomenon of turbo-folk theoretically, is that they first determine their value according to the subject of research, and then study it. The only exact thing that can be extracted from this conceptual and factual confusion is that Ceca married Arkan. And that's not nearly enough to prove and explain the direct connection between turbo-folk and nationalism that we like to take for granted.
