Since our founding in 2010, we at Crvena have been exploring and researching the revolutionary history of Yugoslav women, in particular that of the Women's Antifascist Front (hereinafter AFŽ) and 1942-1953, as it's most glorious era. In 2014, we advanced towards building the online Archive of the Antifascist struggle of women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia (www.afzarhiv.org) that was officially launched on March 8th, 2015. Centered around thousands of documents, photographs, interviews, periodicals, secondary sources, etc., the popularly called AFŽ Archive is the most resourceful digital archive of the history of women’s organised struggle in Yugoslavia. This archiving labor is not just to remember, but also to articulate and politicise the role and position of women in socialist Yugoslavia, to whom our historiography, art and artistic creation have remained deeply indebted.
The archive is constantly researched and activated through an ongoing practice of scientific and art production. From the very beginning of the archiving process, in which we collected, combined, stored, organised, digitised and analysed the material, our roles and rewards have been multiple. In the process, we have been collectors, archivists, researchers, activists, critical thinkers, interpreters, curators and artists, thinking and confronting the archive from different positions, allowing for multifold interpretations and knowledge production. There have been many collaborations and works rooted in the AFŽ Archive.
In December 2016, the Volume "Lost Revolution: Women`s Antifascist front between Myth and Forgetting" was published, representing a pioneering contribution to the feminist historiography, countering as well an otherwise under-researched, trivialised, and de-politicised role of the movement in the traditional historiographic narrative on socialist Yugoslavia. Series of individual and collaborative artworks were produced, presenting an archival corpus in a creative conceptual and visual manner with a strong feminist interpretation and stand. Our latest AFŽ-related undertaking was setting up the permanent exhibition “Polet žena” (Verve of women), at the Historical Museum of B&H in December 2019.
One of the many valuable sources of knowledge and creative stimulus for AFŽ Archive-based art were periodicals published after the Second World War in Yugoslavia. The emergence of women's magazines had great political, cultural and educational significance for women, being the most important medium to convey political and ideological messages as well as to mobilise women for the great tasks that stood ahead of them. A number of women’s magazines were published by AFŽ and its regional branches, i.e. “Žena danas” in Serbia, “Naša žena” in Slovenia, “Makedonka” in Macedonia, “Žena u borbi” in Croatia, “Dalmatinka” in Dalmatia, “Nova žena” in Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.
During the summer of 2018, I spent time at the residence programme in Ljubljana (trans-making project/Horizon 2020 programme), where I worked with the women’s monthly magazine “Naša žena” (Our Woman) that was published after WW2 by the Slovenian AFŽ. I researched editions that came out between 1945 and 1948, which I’ve collected from private sources and at flea markets. Having done substantial research on “Nova žena”, a Bosnian and Herzegovinian AFŽ journal, I noticed many similarities when it came to the content and structure of the magazine. The magazines were very much alike in their composition, however with slight content adaptations toward the respective regions. In addition to articles on the political and economic situation, reports from Congresses and subsequent Resolutions, love for Tito, addresses by prominent AFŽ or Party members, articles on the organisational problems of AFŽ and its most important tasks, occupied a significant place within the magazine. A correspondence with women activists in the field and readers, results of individual work and collective actions, reports on the literacy courses and the problems and successes in certain areas, were also covered. These were followed with literary contributions or content dedicated to the recognition of individual women who, in some way, had excelled in their work, outworked the norm, or died heroically in the struggle for National Liberation. Advice on household, reproductive, and care work were an integral part of the magazine, which aimed at addressing all aspects of women’s lives.
The material was easy to navigate, despite my only partial understanding of Slovenian language. The similarity in form and content and the knowledge of the subject matter have allowed me to focus on particular issues that characterise the first years that followed the war, from 1945 to 1948. Encouraged to take action, to mobilise on all fronts, to vote now that they could, to seek education and advancement in “unusual” professions, women were in these first years portrayed in a revolutionary mode, as partisan fighters, heroic figures, leaders, factory and mine workers, behind heavy machines, doing hard “male” work and generally being powerful and important. After 1948, and which I’ve seen in the Bosnian and Herzegovinian “Nova žena” journal too, the image of women changes. Socially recognised as the role upon which socialism depends the most, motherhood became the paramount preoccupation of the magazine, degrading into a practical journal for reproductive and care work and better management of household duties.
Collage, as my primary medium and technique, was used in treating the archival material. Turning to content and text and appropriating the low quality visual material, I’ve used cut and paste techniques, translation and editing, montage and assemblage, and I’ve dislocated and interrupted. The writings on the back are interpreted and edited articles from Naša žena, fit to size, in a hybrid Slovenian-Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian language. They are formulated as addresses to women about issues that (should) interest them, such as: care for the orphans, the importance of physical education, the relevance of statistics in state economy and women’s role in it, the state of morality at the railroad building sites, etc. Returning to the archaic act and with certain anxiety about whether they will reach the recipient, the collages were constructed as mail artworks and sent through the postal service from Ljubljana to Sarajevo.
The works are hand-made, with scissors, paper, glue and the original material.
Author
Andreja Dugandžić
Andreja Dugandžić lives and works in Sarajevo and is programme officer at CRVENA Association of Culture and Art. She manages the Online Archive of the antifascist struggle of women of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Yugoslavia and is involved in the conceptualisation and production of various feminist, art, and cultural contents and programmes. She is one of the editors of “The Lost Revolution: Women’s Antifascist Front Between Myth and Forgetting” (Sarajevo, 2016). For over 15 years, Andreja has been engaged in different feminist collectives and collaborations, as a cultural worker, producer, activist and artist. Her art work is developed through collage, performance, writing and sound. Exploring mundane and daily domestic life, she is concerned with the wider socio–cultural and gendered dimensions of food, cooking, household labour and its economics. She was a member of the legendary feminist band Starke and also part of the music project Black Water and Her Daughter.
