The Communist Painting in The Age of Digital Reproduction

In September 1961, the Yugoslav state and party leadership organized the First Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries in Belgrade. The agenda of the Belgrade Conference addressed the urgent problems facing the world at the time, insisting on the unconditional, complete, and final abolition of all forms of colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism. In the West, the conference was labeled an anti-Western and anti-American gathering. The Soviet Union, itself accused of contributing to Cold War tensions and of exercising its own form of imperialism, responded by resuming nuclear tests.

The conference hall was decorated with Industrialization, a monumental abstract painting by Petar Lubarda, then the most prominent painter in Yugoslavia. It was in front of this painting that statesmen from twenty-five countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America articulated the basic principles and aims of the Non-Aligned Movement, calling for world peace, disarmament, decolonization, and economic development. The conference was also attended by representatives of thirty-eight revolutionary and anti-colonial movements from around the world.

Half a century later, Belgrade has become a deep periphery of capitalism, situated on the refugee route toward Western Europe. Neither the city nor the refugees from Africa and the Middle East passing through it seem to remember that it was once possible to fight for a different future. I found Lubarda’s original painting in a downtown cinema, hanging above a typical capitalist arrangement: a digital ticket counter, cola drinks, popcorn, and Hollywood trailers. Once aligned with revolutionary and anti-colonial ideology, the communist painting had become a silent and helpless element within the Western entertainment industry. I took several hours of original audio recordings from the conference, preserved in the Radio Belgrade Audio Archive, and reattached them to the painting in a video showing its present condition.