“Past Future Concrete” revisited: Ex-Yugoslav monuments shaped as destinations via online image practices

Spomenik is the Serbo-Croatian word for monument. Internationally, the term is used for the partisan monuments that were erected throughout the former Yugoslavia to commemorate events of the Second World War. With the wars in the 1990s that led to the disintegration of Yugoslavia, many of these objects became detached from their original function, and thus became a dissonant heritage between differing nationalist narratives of the past. With their modernist architecture, the Spomeniks have become, since the late 2000s, popular internet motifs, and tourists are now showing growing interest in visiting the monuments. In order to capitalize on and institutionalize this increasing attention, a cultural route for tourists has recently been established. In this process of valorization, presenting the condition and decay of the monuments and characterizing them as “lost” places, which has become a decisive aesthetic in their circulation online, plays a large role in the constitution of these sites of memory (lieux de mémoire). This picturesque image practice as a phenomenon of cosmopolitanism will be exemplified by online representations of the Tjentište Monument in Bosnia-Herzegovina.