From Army Stories to Community Heritage

In this Citizen Science project, particular experts investigate a so far little explored and sometimes taboo topic: Cold War military installations on the former Yugoslavian coast. After the end of the Second World War, several high-security military zones with cannon systems, ship bunkers, barracks and training grounds were built along the coast and the islands. They were meant to protect the non-aligned country from a possible attack from the sea. At the same time, a great number of tourist facilities for the newly emerging (mass) tourism were built in the very same coastal zone, partly in the immediate vicinity. Most of the military facilities as well as many tourist buildings from this period are vacant today and face an uncertain future. The tourism history of the Adriatic has been fairly well researched in the last years, but very little is known about the military development. Many years of military secrecy and then the Yugoslav wars, which split up the previously joint military, left large gaps in archives but also in the consciousness of the population. The only people who really know about the premises and their usage are their former users: Mostly men, currently aged 47+, who served in the still common army before the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Women were only allowed to do voluntary military service for a short period of time (1983-1985). For the purpose of promoting the united Yugoslav society, the conscripts were distributed to barracks as far away from their homes as possible. Thus, today`s knowledge about the matter is scattered far and wide. The once common military is not a popular topic in the official narrative of any successor state. But the former recruits have found ways to exchange memories of what was for them a very formative time on internet forums and social media sites. The TCS project follows up on this widespread practice and tries to process the history of the forgotten (or suppressed) spaces with the help of these special experts. The internet platforms they are already active on are used as research platforms. The establishment and use of once military spaces on the coast will be explored collaboratively, as well as their influence on the local area and population. The aim is to find out in a collective process whether and which spaces and buildings are worth preserving, but also which experiences and memories should be passed on to later generations. The project "From Army Stories to Community Heritage" is a TCS extension project to the FWF-Peek funded project "Collective Utopias of Post-War Modernism. Adriatic Coast as Leisure and Defence Paradise." Project lead: Antonia Dika, Institute for Space and Design, University of Art and Design Linz Research partner: Anamarija Batista, Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Project website: leisureanddefence.org

No additional funding sources recorded.