Gaps, or the Dialectics of Inter-imperial Art: The Case of the Belgrade Surrealist Circle
Abstract:This essay reflects on the challenges posed to cultural and fiction studies by cases of imperially sedimented inter-positionality: their repercussions on our understanding of lived temporalities, the strategies we use to translate this understanding into art, and the critical tools to evaluate artworks thus produced. The essay makes operational the category of inter-imperiality and tackles phenomena such as placedness, translatability, and futurity of artwork, while discussing the Yugoslav surrealists’ piece of engagement art Facing a Wall: A Simulation of the Paranoiac Delirium of Interpretation. Survey (1932), Vane Bor’s 1935 photo-series, and Marko Ristić’s 1928 anti-novel Without Measure (1928).