Monuments built to preserve a collective memory have themselves become objects of forgetting, reinterpretation and fascination. Milestones (Umetnost sećanja) explores the extraordinary modernist monuments of former Yugoslavia and asks what happens to their meaning when the country and ideology that created them disappear

Across the former Yugoslavia stand monumental structures commemorating the Second World War, antifascist resistance and the victims of fascism. Often built in striking modernist and abstract forms, these monuments once played an important role in the collective memory of Yugoslav society.

Decades after the country's dissolution, their position has fundamentally changed. Some remain important sites of remembrance, others have been neglected or contested, while their extraordinary architecture has attracted an entirely new international audience of photographers, artists, researchers and tourists.

In Milestones, director Jelena Radenović brings together a wide range of voices to examine why these monuments were created, what they originally represented and how their meaning has changed as political systems, national identities and attitudes towards the past have shifted.

Why watch?

The monuments of former Yugoslavia tell a story that extends far beyond architecture. They raise questions about who decides how history is remembered, what happens to shared heritage after a country disappears, and whether a monument can acquire a completely new meaning for later generations.

Milestones approaches these structures not simply as spectacular objects, but as places where art, politics, history and collective memory intersect.

The subject has also received considerable international attention. In 2018, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) presented Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, a major exhibition examining the distinctive architecture of socialist Yugoslavia and its relationship with the country's social and political ambitions.

Special premiere at LAB-1 + Q/A

On 9 October at 19:00, LAB-1 presents the premiere of Milestones (Umetnost sećanja / The Art of Remembering) in Eindhoven.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with director Jelena Radenović (flying in from Serbia) and guests from the fields of culture and art, offering an opportunity to continue the questions raised by the documentary about cultural heritage, memory and the legacy of former Yugoslavia.