An Example of Yugoslav Avantgarde, The Short Life and Violent Death of Pupilija Ferkerverk (1969-1972)

An Example of the Yugoslav Avant-garde Art: The Short Life and Violent Death of Pupilija Ferkverk (1969-1972) There are two stories about the art in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia: an official one, and the other, less official, about avant-garde art, often suppressed and censored, if not legally, then physically. If, on the political agenda of the Yugoslav students’ movement in 1968, there was an attempt to break with the ruling ideology, then its aesthetic effect was recognized in the emancipation from the mainstream culture. For example, Slovenian theatre artists, as well as Belgrade performance artists, from the early 1970s, represent the only legitimate continuation of the aesthetic intervention that Belgrade and Ljubljana students made in June 1968. Throughout the following years, Dušan Jovanović, Mile Korun, Ivo Svetina, Marina Abramović, Raša Teodosijević and Era Milivojević, production-by-production, performance-by-performance, deconstructed allegorical representations that the Yugoslav official culture continued to produce through para theatrical events, parades, national theater, and television broadcast. In my article, I will try to explore the tension that existed between avant-garde art and various forms of censorship in the SFRY, by analyzing the "case" of the Slovenian experimental theatre group, Pupilija Ferkeverk. The way this group was organized, its performances, its relationship with the audience, and its reception, all were atypical to what was considered the mainstream theatre. This tension lasted for a short while, because the oppressive Seventies replaced the years of artistic freedom, which were introduced in 1968 by the student movement. The short and tumultuous life of Pupilija Ferkeverk, between 1969 and 1972, was brutally interrupted by the arrest of some of its members and the censorship that was never officially proclaimed. However, its legacy is still felt not only in the experimental Slovenian theatre, but also in Serbian and Croatian theatres.