Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Programme committee
Boidar Jezernik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts,
Slovenia (chair of the programme committee)
Istvn Povedk, MTA-SZTE Research Group for the Study
of Religious Culture, Hungary
Ivan olovi, Biblioteka XX vek, Serbia
Jurij Fikfak, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy
of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia
Tomislav Pletenac, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences, Slovenia
Organising committee
Dan Podjed, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of
Sciences and Arts, Slovenia (chair of the organising committee)
Marjana Strmnik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts,
Slovenia
Sara pelec, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia
Saa Babi, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy
of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia
Introduction
Persons - and things - shining
out of a grey reality
Daniel J. Boorstin defined the celebrity as a person who is
known for his well-knownness. In this symposium we try to
pinpoint such famous individuals within Central and Southeastern Europe, and analyse the foundations of their fame.
The symposium focuses on several thematic streams and draws
parallels between them. For example, it looks into how managers, politicians, and economists, from the past and present,
must constantly re-create their public appearance. It spotlights
artists, i.e. musicians, film-makers, and sculptors, who appear
in prominent public events and make their fame also through
staged pseudo-events. It introduces the fame of athletes, whom
are applauded when they stand on a podium with a medal, yet
often ridiculed when they fall from a highly established position. It is also interested in outstanding scholars who managed
to build their central place both inside and outside academia,
through front-stage appearances and back-stage activities,
each being of similar importance. Finally, the symposium raises a question if a celebrity is necessarily a person and brings
attention to non-living things, including vehicles.
The symposium does not focus only on contemporary celebrities; it includes individuals of the past who used various strategies appropriate to their time period and socio-cultural environment to stand out from the crowd. It tries to establish
how their fame and celebrity status have transformed and how
some of them managed to achieve a heroic status in society.
Schedule
9:30-9:45
9:45-10:00
10:00-10:30
10:30-11:00
11:00-11:30
11:30-12:00
12:00-14:00
14:00-14:30
14:30-15:00
Welcome coffee
Introductory speech
KEYNOTE LECTURE: Ivan olovi
Paths of glory: How people from the
margins grab the attention of the nation
Istvn Povedk
Romani celebrities in Hungarian mass media
Dan Podjed
Superstar Yugo: Making a celebrity out
of the worst car in the world
Tomislav Pletenac
When a waiter became a celebrity:
War as a reality show
Lunch break
Svanibor Pettan
The notion of celebrity in art music
Alenka Bartulovi, Miha Kozorog
Sevdah celebrities in contemporary
Bosnia-Herzegovina: Challenging
narrations about sevdalinka
15:00-15:30
15:30-16:00
16:00-16:30
16:30-17:00
Ana Hofman
The false glitter of fame: Folk singers,
celebrity culture and gender in
a post-Yugoslav context
Coffee break
Simona Vidmar
Heroes we love: Socialist realism revised
Tatiana Bajuk Senar
Typology of celebrity economists
Welcome coffee
Boidar Jezernik
Ivan Zajec (18691952)
10:30-11:00
Peter Simoni
Vladimir Rukavina: A cultural manager
and master of sponsorship
11:00-11:30
Marjana Strmnik
Commander Stane
11:30-12:00
Sara pelec
The image of Alexander I of Yugoslavia
in Slovenian newspapers
12:00-14:30
Lunch break*
14:30-15:00
Saa Babi
Petra Majdi: A Slovenian sports heroine
15:00-15:30
Botjan Videmek, Matja Pograjc
Roks depth
15:30-16:00
Debate and conclusion
9:30-10:00
10:00-10:30
Abstracts
Ivan olovi
Biblioteka XX vek
Abstracts
Istvn Povedk
Istvn Povedk is a research fellow at the MTA-SZTE Research Group for the Study of Religious Culture (Szeged,
Hungary). He studied History, Ethnology, and Religious
Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary, and holds a
PhD from ELTE University, Budapest, for which he wrote
his dissertation titled Heroes and Celebrities. He is interested
in the contemporary cult of heroes and celebrities, vernacular religiosity, and the mingling of neo-nationalism, Christianity, and neopaganism. He published numerous articles
on these topics, including the books Heroes and Celebrities
in Central- and Eastern Europe and lhsk, hamis istenek?
Hs-s sztrkultusz a posztmodern korban (Pseudo-Heroes,
Fake Gods? The Cult of Heroes and Celebrities in Postmodernity). He is the head of the Ethnology of Religion Working
Group of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) and of the Network for the Research of Modern
Mythology (MoMiM). E: povedakistvan@gmail.com.
Abstracts
Dan Podjed
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Abstracts
Tomislav Pletenac
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Tomislav Pletenac is an associated professor at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty
of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. His interests
lie in postcolonial theory, psychoanalytic theory, popular
culture, and genocide studies. Specific topics of his research
include the history of ethnology in Southeastern Europe, nationalism, vampires in popular culture, and the Srebrenica
genocide. He teaches Theories in Cultural Anthropology,
Ethnography in Popular Culture, Postcolonialism and Gender, and the Cultures of Postsocialism. E: tpletena@ffzg.hr.
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Abstracts
Svanibor Pettan
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Abstracts
Alenka Bartulovi, Miha Kozorog
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts
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Abstracts
Ana Hofman
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memory politics, applied ethnomusicology, and neoliberalism all in the context of the former Yugoslavia. She has
published a number of articles and book chapters related to
music and politics in socialist Yugoslavia and post-Yugoslav
societies. In 2011 she published the book Staging Socialist
Femininity: Gender Politics and Folklore Performances in Serbia. In 2015 she published a book about the afterlife of partisan songs in Slovenia, titled Music, Politics, Affect: Afterlife of
Partisan Songs in Slovenia. E: ahofman@zrc-sazu.si.
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Abstracts
Simona Vidmar
Maribor Art Gallery
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Abstracts
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an identity, and recently authored a book titled European Integration as Cultural Practice: The First Generation of Slovene
Eurocrats. E: tatiana.bajuk@zrc-sazu.si.
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Abstracts
Boidar Jezernik
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Boidar Jezernik is a full professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana. He teaches Ethnology of
the Balkans and has conducted extensive field work in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. He was the head of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty
of Arts, University of Ljubljana, from 1988 to 1992 and from
1998 to 2003, and the dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, from 2003 to 2007. He has been leading the
program research group Slovenian Identities in European and
Global Context since 2004, and heads the research project Heroes and Celebrities in Slovenia and Central Europe. bozidar.
jezernik@ff.uni-lj.si.
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Abstracts
Peter Simoni
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Abstracts
Marjana Strmnik
Commander Stane
The author aims to present how the image of the people's
hero of Yugoslavia, Franc Rozman Stane, evolved since his
death in 1943. Commander Stane, as he was known among
his fellow partisans, was one of the most prominent figures
of the Second World War in Slovenian territory. He was presented as such for decades, whereas nowadays his legacy is
questioned by some historians and political elites. How did
the representations of the memory of his persona develop
and change during these years? What was the influence of
certain ideologies of the political elites? How was he used as
a tool of legitimacy of those elites? How was his image used
in the past and is still used today in the process of creating
memory?
Marjana Strmnik holds a BA degree in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. Since 2013/14 she has been a postgraduate student at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts,
researching the Order of People's hero of Yugoslavia. She is
employed as a research assistant at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the same Faculty. Her
research interests include: anthropology of war, anthropology of body, the Balkans, socialism, postsocialism, and culture
of memory. E: marjana.strmcnik@ff.uni-lj.si.
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Abstracts
Sara pelec
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Abstracts
Saa Babi
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Abstracts
Rok's Depth
Rok Petrovi is one of a very few Slovenian mythological heroes and the only one of them that was and is, here and now
real. King Matja is asleep and Kekec is an invention of a
writers imagination. There is nobody else to turn to, which
is why Roks story, albeit never really told or explored until
now, was such a powerful identification point for at least two
generations of Slovenians who spent the 1980s, which were
both extreme and momentous in terms of skiing, politics,
and social issues, looking for something to hold on to among
the slippery and sharp rocks forming the overhang of history.
With five victories and the maximum number of points
scored during the cult 1985/86 ski season, Rok, a ski champion, was the first Slovene or, rather, Yugoslav to become
the overall slalom winner and receive the Small Crystal
Globe. In the context of skiing, however, Rok, who was only
nineteen at the time, was more than a serial winner. From
one race to the next, from one training session to the next,
and from one life experience to the next, like a slightly mad
scientist, he kept puzzling out a new skiing technique, playing around with equipment, and experimenting with different approaches to training like no one before.
The show called Roks Depth (Rokova modrina), which is
being developed at the Mladinsko Theatre, is presented by
the scriptwriter Botjan Videmek and the director Matja
Pograjc.
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