prosthetic knowledge

Turbo Sculpture 

A case study of 21st Century Postmodernism by Aleksandra Domanović.

Video photo essay with commentary looks at the after-effects of the wars in former Yugoslavia in relation to public art, where sculptures of world-famous celebrities and pop culture icons were constructed as opposed to local relevant figures.

Turbo Sculpture 2012 from A.D. on Vimeo.

From Space Studios:

The Political and economic turmoil of the early 1990s Yugoslavia rendered the society compliant enough for the concept of ‘turbo culture’ to gain momentum. With all its exaggerations, inordinateness and random amalgamations of both local and global ornamentation, turbo eventually became a prefix for social and media phenomena of the war and post-war period. As a result terms such as turbo politics, turbo television, turbo architecture and turbo urbanism developed…

- excerpt from Turbo Sculpture, Aleksandra Domanović, 2011

‘Turbo sculpture’ is an epiphenomenon of turbo culture. It refers to the depiction of popular non-national media celebrities in public sculpture projects across the former Yugoslavian nations. In recent years turbo sculpture monuments of Bruce Lee (Mostar, 2005), Rocky Balboa (Žitište, 2007), Johnny Weissmuller / Tarzan (Međa, 2007), Bob Marley (Banatski Sokolac, 2007) and Tupac Shakur (Belgrade, forthcoming) have been unveiled.

It is commonly argued that the rejection of the traditional regional/political context of civic monuments (leading to the turbo sculpture age) is a condition of the post-traumatic recalibration of identity and ideology that occurred following the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

The video (embedded above) is an updated version from the previous 2010 version.