Summer in the Museum: An Evening of YU Vinyl

We will be closing our summer at the Museum with An Evening of Yugoslav Vinyl. Joining us are Dr. Smeđi Šećer and Tetkine Radosti, leading Yugoslav funk sound explorers who will be hitting the stage. For all vinyl lovers and collectors, Parallel Festival will be in charge of providing forgotten Yugoslav vinyl records for visitors to browse through and buy. A special surprise will await our guests in front of the fountain where the art group Karkatag Collective will be placing their monumental interactive sculpture Rehearsal – a simulation of synchronised swimming movements. Last but not least, our regular partners responsible for quenching your thirst are Kabinet Brewery and Schweppes, and for additional support the Lice Ulice street newspaper.

Opening hours of the Museum on Saturday, 25 August, will be extended and from 6 to 8 pm it will be free. 

YU Funk as a genre was only sufficiently analysed after Yugoslav record labels cessed to exist and this was mainly due to the advent of a community of “vinyl diggers”. These are obsessive record collectors and DJs who rummage through flea markets and second-hand shops in search of forgotten, but valuable pieces of local musical history. Filtering through old vinyl records they create unique DJ sets and mixes, inscribing a new chapter in the history of Yugoslav pop music and at the same time transforming existing genre cannons. Part of this community and one of their best representatives regionally are Dr. Brown Sugar from Rijeka and the DJ trio Auntie’s Joy from Ljubljana.

Karkatag is Belgrade based art collective. Work of collective includes machines, interactive and autonomous installations and manipulable objects. Collective uses industrial materials and technologies in research of different natural and scientific phenomena, interactivity and performativity of machines, sound, motion. Through public actions and performances, by placing installations and machines in space as urban scenography and props, collective also introduces social aspects of its work. In those settings spectator/passer-by is being involved in co-play with machine/installation and thereby becoming an active partaker in changing the perception of space and daily routine of the city.

The Museum of Yugoslavia in partnership with Savski Venac Municipality started the Summer at the Museum project led by the idea to affirm the Museum as a space of fun and socialising. One of the aims of the project is to enliven the plateau in front of the Museum by targeting a particular crowd of museum goers with summer programs, additionally adding to the city of Belgrade’s summer events. This will animate visitors who are most unlikely to visit the Museum – the local youth.