Dynamics of Particular and Common: Monuments and Patriotic Tourism in Socialist Yugoslavia – a Case Study of Kosovo

This work was supported by a grant from National Science Centre in Poland (project number 2016/23/N/HS3/00841) entitled “Ideological-aesthetic transformations of representation systems in communist Albania”. Competing interests: no competing interests have been declared. Publisher: Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 PL License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/), which permits redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, provided that the article is properly cited. © The Author(s) 2019. Agata Rogoś Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7417-3268


Introduction
The aim of this paper is to discuss two research questions: how ideological and aesthetic patterns of representations of war in Socialist Yugoslavia confront each other and in what way patriotic tourism has impacted the commemorative rituals associated with strengthening the official narrative of the common (inter-ethnic) struggle for liberation. Thus, the paper focuses not only on the clash between the analysis of two examples of material cultural production, i.e. memorials in Mitrovica and Landovica that explore the relations between two communities (Serbs and Albanians), but also the reconstructive mechanisms of elements of World War II representations in the collective memory, with a particular focus on inter-ethnic Serbian-Albanian relations and the slogan of brotherhood and unity. Through analysis of the semantics of art and oral histories, I will point out a functionalization of the ideology of socialist Yugoslavia based on the dynamics of particular and common. Thus, the paper is focused on interdisciplinary analytic approaches which will help to create a complete representation model of the analyzed subject.
For the purpose of this paper I apply a dualistic research methodology: 1) Historical and source query based on archives which allows the collection of source materials (including visual material, so far unpublished) and their critical analysis.
2) The methodology of qualitative research or in-depth interviews with narrative interview elements, which allows the beliefs and views of the respondents in the following areas to be recognized: how ideological and aesthetic transformation occurred in urban public spaces; in what way the inhabitants of these spaces contributed to the construction of new systems of representation.
Conducting research with the use of elements of the biographical method allows the observation of the transformation of customs and ways of cultivating the identity of Albanians in Kosovo in the framework of ideology of brotherhood and unity and interaction with the Serbian (Yugoslav) cultural tradition. This type of methodology also introduces the perspective of pluralism and a synchronous approach to the past, which can be perceived subjectively by different social groups.
The paper is intended to complement the knowledge of the semantics of "the border space" through a new perception and presentation of cultural models as an example of verification of the ideological and aesthetic transformation of the system of representations of war and analysis of the mechanisms of their promotion in the collective memory. The analyzed monuments are material symbols of the cultural landscape of borders that are primarily located on the boundaries of ethnic, cultural and political contact points. Mitrovica (north Kosovo) -as a border city divided currently into two parts that are under the jurisdiction of two national states -is a particular example of the confrontative policies and urban symbolisms that exist and interact in one border space. Landovica, the second example, which is situated in the south of Kosovo near the multi-cultural city of Prizren in a triangle between Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia, is an important landmark of the Yugoslav ideology of brotherhood and unity. Secondly, the memorials I refer to in this paper are unique examples which directly express the socialist ideals of transgressing boundaries and divisions between different (conflictual) cultural traditions.

War memorials' typology and performative functions
The Latin meaning of 'memorials' is 'things that remind', so we come to the link between monuments (memorials) and memory that explores the ways in which monuments and our critical approach to them have evolved over the course of twentieth century: "the ways the monument itself has been reformulated in its function as a memorial, as a contemporary aesthetic response to the past" (Young, 2003, p. 234). The main function and semantic meaning of monuments and memorials is to remind. In recent decades -as have all art practices -they have undergone a transformation process in terms of aesthetic forms and functions of social interaction in public space; however, the memorial has still kept its primary function, which is to remind.
Managing sites is based on decisions concerning what to say and what to leave out -how to create the narrative. It is important to determine what aspects of the past are being ignored or under-represented in the interpretation of the aforementioned memory sites. Sometimes, whole sites might be missing from the public consciousness as the public in question does not want to remember the values associated with it. Memory sites (lieux de mémoire [Nora, 1989[Nora, -1992) that harbor or embed memories of a group reinforce the connection with the past and roots. James E. Young explains the contemporary status of monuments in this way: For those in the modern age who insist on such forms [traditional monumentality], the result can only be a "pseudomonumentality", which Giedion called the use of "routine shapes from bygone periods… [But] because they had lost their inner significance, they had become devaluated; mere clichés without emotional justification". To some extent, we might even see such pseudomonumentality as a sign of modern longing for common values and ideals (Young, 2003, p. 236).
These speculations around figurative and abstract or traditional and contemporary forms of monumentality, i.e. pseudomonumentality, lead us to the presumption that -due to the modern negation of monuments and the disappearance of universal shared myths and values in postmodern societies -the pattern of traditional monumentality may triumph in its comeback in public art space. Moreover, as seen in the recent history of public art and the disappearance of some monuments, it might be stated clearly that neither monuments nor their meanings are really everlasting -they are both constructed in particular times and places, depending on the political, historical and aesthetic realities of the moment. James Young, referring to Pierre Nora (1989-1992 and Andreas Huyssen (1993), made a striking remark: "if we once assign monumental form to memory, we have to some degree divested ourselves of the obligation to remember" (Young, 2003, p. 238). This brings us to the hope of regimes that emerge from the monumental delusion that they will remain permanent as they suppose their monuments will. Politically driven monuments should not be analyzed only from the aesthetic perspective, but as suggested by James E. Young, "to explore not just the relations between people and their monuments (on the basis of what Peter Bürger, 1983, calls 'functional analysis of art') but the consequences of these relations in historical time" (Young, 2003, p. 246), thus commemorating the models they create and as a result the sociopolitical change they bring.
Memorials have many more functions in public life than traditional monuments, which used to be mostly representative reminders of heroes' glory and spectacular victories. Memorials tend to envisage contrasting images -victims, grieving, terror and violence. When analyzing memorials in this context, one should take into consideration several aspects of their existence and the diversification of forms that serve to create possibilities of different performances. There are three important issues that appear when investigating the performative functions of memorials: (a) commemoration; (b) production of conflicted narratives; (c) exposure of violence in the frames of representation of war. They also have to be considered in the overall context of visual culture and the significant changes in the art perception of today's public, which has shifted from a passive viewer to an engaged spectator.
Memorials have started to perform as spaces of engagement where seeing means experiencing and interpreting. However, they still remain sites of active performances during official ceremonies and commemorative events such as tributes, and during individual interventions: both of the performative models create a personal connection with the site on a collective and individual level. In these terms, memorials are not just objects that are being looked at, but their form and functionalization insist that more efforts are made to interpret their meaning; this was raised by James E. Young, who claimed that monuments and memorials are not only "past reminders" but they require visitors to "look within themselves for memory" (Young, 2000, p. 119).
The models of representation (figurative and abstract) might be categorized in accordance with what seems to be an official or an unofficial monument. Most abstract memorials and experimental forms of commemoration which are related to the lack of established and imposed systems of symbols are raised as formal, state-funded memorial complexes that serve as a permanent place to visit, remember and grieve. However, traditional (figurative) monuments express a desire for the portrayal of heroism, mostly through the figure of a soldier or fighter, with a particular model of gestures and attributes that give a significant source of meaning. Problems with the meanings of figurative memorials arise not from what is represented and how; instead, they arise from what is not visualized, as particular audiences recognize that certain relevant meanings have been excluded from the representation model.
When discussing the role of memorials, one important issue should be emphasized. The dynamic erection of monuments and memorials as an act of remembrance of people is now a much broader and more diverse process than it used to be in the past, when the main themes of memorializing were based on heroism and honor. Today, honoring extends to previously unnoticed elements such as the theme of victimization of a particular ethnic group or a nation, which can be called a shift away from only heroic commemoration (Young, 2000(Young, , 2003. Another issue that arises from studies of memorials concerns searching for appropriate models of representation/commemoration of such events. This starts from the question of the format of the object and the form of the memorial (figurative or abstract); it then proceeds through the way of functionalization as a formal or informal monument, and finally asks for the best ways of spectatorship -from passive to participatory.

Building brotherhood and unity in art and space -representations of war in Socialist Yugoslavia
In the post-World War II period, the main identity narrative of Socialist Yugoslavia arose from the emphasis of the common struggle for liberation from fascism, class oppression and underdevelopment, which was expressed by the slogan of brotherhood and unity as a product of trans-federal collaboration and collectivism. Implementing the official narratives of the people's liberation struggle was aimed at legitimizing the dominant socialist ideology and creating a unifying symbolic order expressed by new architecture and monuments for a new inter-ethnic society. In this new Yugoslavian project, distinct nations/ethnicities were brought together under the cover of the ideology of brotherhood and unity ( fig. 1.). Postwar Yugo-slavia was designed as a federation of distinct ethno-national groups. However, the dynamics between unity and particularity have defined the restless construct of the six constituent republics and, since the new constitution of 1974, also the two autonomous provinces in Serbia: Kosovo and Vojvodina (Kulić & Thaler, 2018, pp. 27-39;Jović, 2004;Djilas, 1991;Shoup, 1968). As Vladimir Kulić writes when discussing the ideology of brotherhood and unity in cultural terms: (…) a certain homogenization of experience occurred as the majority of Yugoslav citizens for the first time came to enjoy a similarly modern way of life, share a common popular culture, and meet their peers from other parts of the country through regular travel -all of which amounted to far more powerful factors for cohesion than the officially sanctioned ideological proclamations and rituals (Kulić & Thaler, 2018, p. 29).
In the timeframe of the "Yugoslavia project", long before the crisis that emerged in the 1980s, some political tensions appeared, especially when considering Kosovo.1 The bonds and networks created over the preceding decades in the cultural and societal field of Yugoslavia were distracted by nationalist movements in the 1980s. However, this is not the main focus of this paper and in the course of further analysis I will not refer to these occurrences.
1 The period of the Aleksandar Ranković regime and the years 1968 and 1981 constituted significant landmarks for the Albanian movement in communist Yugoslavia, marked by massive riots by the Albanian people. At the same time these periods witnessed an increase in the "Turkish" population, proving the existence of identity transformations based on the fear of further repression by the authorities (Rogoś, 2019, pp. 211-224).
As underlined by Kulić (Kulić & Thaler, 2018), the shared commodities of everyday life have empowered a very strong notion of the homogeneity of a diversified (ethnically and culturally) Yugoslav society. One of the results of this process will be analyzed in the following part of this paper: (a) official narratives of the Liberation Struggle in Socialist Yugoslavia based on Serb-Albanian reports; (b) shared memorial sites and patriotic tourism in the years 1960-1986. A hybrid construct of the Yugoslav cultural landscape -on the one hand homogenized through shared experiences, conditions of living and everyday rituals -was also highly diversified by local traditions and ethno-cultural heritage.
Artists and architects face a big creative challenge: to design artifacts that combine those two identity contradictions. The big spectrum of the realized projects makes them highly diversified in aesthetic terms as there was nothing unitary that could connect all these productions in one stylistic program. These projects are also diverse in their typology: individual sculptures, memorial cemeteries, parks, museums and hybrid spatial programs that integrate commemoration with everyday life and leisure. On the other hand, "certain architectural programs, such as war memorials and tourism facilities, served as de facto generators of unity as well; distributed all over the country's territory, they motivated and enabled mobility, thus allowing Yugoslavs to get to know each other" (Kulić & Thaler, 2018, p. 29). This in turn helped to build patriotism easily by merging the experience of travelling and commemorating that was realized in patriotic tourism and other collective activities that will be described in following parts of this paper.
Following Vladimir Kulić (Kulić & Thaler, 2018), I would like to refer to two crucial examples that have directly applied the slogan of brotherhood and unity in cultural and artistic programs combined with industry development. The first example is the modernist structure at the center of New Belgrade known as SIV -Savezno izvršno veće (Federal Executive Council) -which is also on a symbolic level the implementation of socialist Yugoslavia's ideology. There are two main decorative elements of the artistic program of this building that lead towards the ideology of brotherhood and unity. The first one is a massive mosaic in the main hall that represents the legendary Battle of the Sutjeska (1943), one of the most commemorated events of the People's Liberation War of Yugoslavia. The second component comprises six 'salons' dedicated to the former constituent republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia; each salon was designed by an architect from the respective republic and all of them express the trans-federal but unified identity of Yugoslavia.
The second example of modernization of Yugoslavia that refers directly to its unifying concept is the first modern road named "The Highway of Brotherhood and Unity", which initially connected Belgrade and Zagreb and then extended further to Macedonia and Slovenia, thereby connecting six constituent Yugoslav republics. Like the majority of the socialist initiative, this investment was also built by volunteer brigades of young Yugoslavs from all republics who participated in the construction works. However, what makes this example unique and may let us relate it to Russian Constructivism and the works of Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko was the fact that this realization of ideological and industrial concepts inspired two simultaneous exhibitions in Belgrade and Zagreb in 1950, whose aim was to promote and commemorate the completion of the first phase of the investment (Kulić & Thaler, 2018, pp. 31-33).

Models of commemoration: from secular pilgrimage to patriotic tourism
In summer 1946 the Yugoslav government announced an annual two weeks of paid holidays (Duda, 2010, p. 35;Baranowski & Furlough, 2001, p. 16). As Igor Duda claims, the main point of this state initiative was to turn workers into tourists, therefore the annual paid leave of two weeks that was available to everyone through subsidies had to be taken in a different location than one's place of residence (Duda, 2010, pp. 33-68). In the immediate post-war period, the state policies attempted to consolidate the newly bound Yugoslav ethno-nationalities with a national and ideological consciousness that would diminish divisions and unite the diverse society. Nonetheless, the Yugoslav authorities believed that a special patriotic format of tourism could be used as a tool for reconciliation between communities and create a common identity (Yeomans, 2010, p. 72). The idea of patriotic tourism that was pervasively present in the 1950s was abandoned at the end of 1960s in an atmosphere of political and national turmoil; later, the idea of ideologized tourism come back but in a softer form. This strategy was developed not only within socialist Yugoslavia, but the point was to promote Yugoslavia as an ideal holiday destination for other socialist visitors. Tourist propaganda also developed through the production of guidebooks that were designed to show illustrations and photographs not only of the beauty of the homeland but also "important moments from the National Liberation Struggle" (Yeomans, 2010, p. 102). The idea behind these initiatives was that "through travel to other parts of country, the nations of Yugoslavia would learn to see each other as brothers and attain a Yugoslav identity" (Yeomans, 2010, p. 102).
Commemoration remains the most crucial component of memorials' performativity and requires detailed examination of its specifics. In this paper I investigate in particular one of the commemorating practices, taking a case study of selected Kosovo World War II memorials and monuments related to the idea of brotherhood and unity. Functionalization of memorials has developed several socio-political practices with the participation of a diverse public focused on war remembrance: anniversary rituals focused on important battles, collective and individual active performances at memorial sites, engaged spectatorship of the traumatic sites and, last but not least, constructing commemorative narratives both on the official (state) level as well as in oral histories of war witnesses and survivors. Ways of commemoration of the war might be divided into three groups: visiting and bringing tributes, expressing responses to the event and interacting with others and holding ceremonies.
Visiting memorials -sites designed as places of honor for remembering -is focused on the act of grieving and performances (rituals) associated with commemoration and paying respects to the victims and heroes of the nation. One of the ways of active performances related to visiting memorials is the act of ritual marking of the site, which in most cases is represented by the phenomenon of pilgrimage -a journey to a sacred place -which can be observed on the official and unofficial level. Official secular pilgrimage is focused on the anniversaries and grieving rituals organized by state agencies with the participation of political actors, mostly in a cyclic, repetitive periodicity based on important state holidays and the process of mythologization of the liberation struggle for independence. This global phenomenon is also the case of monuments in Yugoslavia (Mitrovica, Landovica, etc.) and the post-Yugoslav monuments in Kosovo that memorialize the war of 1999 (Adem Jashari Memorial Complex in Prekaz, Kosovo) (Di Lellio & Schwandner-Sievers, 2006).
Commemoration of war is also recognized in the active performance of social and political actors and individuals in the form of engaged spectatorship. This can be signified not only by expressing responses to the commemorated event and interacting with others, but also in more formalized rituals such as official ceremonies. In studies of contemporary memorials, a number of ways of expression (responses) have been recognized as performative acts of com-memoration (Di Lellio & Schwandner-Sievers, 2006;Logan, 2009;Santino, 2006;Schellenberg, 2016;Young, 2000Young, , 2003.
Another example of written messages that constitute an important part of a monument or memorial is a text placed on the foundation of a monument or as a freestanding informative plaque. In research of Kosovo war memorials, which might as well refer to general studies of public remembrance, three types of text messages that are associated with monuments might be listed: (1) Memorial text as a history lesson -giving comprehensive information about the event; (2) Text representing names of places of traumatic events, which is a kind of mapping of violence and plays both an informative and a commemorative function; (3) Listing victims' and soldiers' names on memorials -this is inherited from the World War I tradition and underlines the symbolic significance in collective memory. All these models of passive and active commemoration bring new unanticipated meanings to memory sites. People (spectators and active performers) draw meaning from memorials by seeing and mentally reflecting, occupying, experiencing and acting these sites, which constitutes the essence of public remembering.
Pilgrimage is defined in this paper as a visit to a place where both the journey and its destination are believed to empower individuals or groups to create bonds with a higher state of being and contemplate on matters of life, death and beyond. There are three important components that define this kind of secular pilgrimage and that might be observed in the context of the analyzed case study of Kosovo monuments and memorial sites in relation to the official narrative of the people's liberation struggle and the ideology of brotherhood and unity.
The first component is the great importance of the location of a monument or shrine. Many monuments have an unusual remote location that can be explained in dualistic way: as a peculiarity of Yugoslavia or, in general, as a partisan war experience or a demand that came directly from the people and the designers of the site. Remote locations correspond to the expansiveness of the surrounding landscape and on the artistic level are expressed through oversized dimensions, new typologies of monuments and the expansive use of form and material. Therefore, the designs of Yugoslav architecture and monuments -new utopian abstract forms of imposing dimensions -did not necessarily emerge from individual artistic exhibitionism, as claimed by Sanja Horvatinčić (2018, pp. 104-111), but in response to thematic and contextual conditions. The abstract forms of the Yugoslav monuments have allowed them to establish more universal meanings and timeless aesthetics that do not refer exclusively to a certain time frame or socialist ideology. On the contrary, they overcame their time and leave more space for interpretation of universal national values such us heroism, struggle, freedom, or inter-ethnic relations in multinational societies.
The second component that defines secular pilgrimage is associated with approaching the state as an object of religiosity (in some cases replacing religion with secular heroic cults). Secular pilgrimages may involve visits to public buildings, the graves of national heroes, or sites of battles that figure importantly in national histories. These performances were associated with a person or a place of great importance to the Liberation Movement and served as a kind of tribute to fallen heroes, but most importantly they served as an establishment of the official narrative that intended to cultivate and construct a culture of remembrance. Centered on the most important days in the socialist Yugoslav calendar (anniversaries of deaths, births or battles) the commemoration was initiated with a long-distance march of at least 20 kilometers, as in the case of the analyzed monuments in Mitrovica (1973) and Landovica (1963), Vitromirica (date of erecting unknown) and one of the most iconic monuments of Sutjeska Battle in Tjentište (1971). All these examples have served as sites of patriotic tourism for individual and organized groups that visit the most important venues commemorating the Liberation Struggle of Yugoslavia.
Last but not least, the experience of travelling itself may be seen as a practice that transforms social identities. The process of transforming identity brings us to the definition of patriotic tourism that in many ways might be used in a place of secular pilgrimage. Treated as a nation-building effort, patriotic tourism in the Yugoslav case acquired an additional dimension aimed at ethnic reconciliation through direct encounter.

Shrines to the Fallen Serb and Albanian Partisans: Mitrovica and Landovica memorials
The main task of memorials, monuments and war museums is to represent problematic and violent memories of conflict and war, and they are expected to transfer this content to the public in a responsible way, but this remains a very difficult task. All of the alleged typologies of monuments and memorials show that "war narratives are highly politicized narratives that can be easily manipulated by those in power, those privileged members of society who want to direct historical perception in a certain way and who attempt to shape collective memory accordingly" (Schellenberg, 2016, p. 14).
In socialist Yugoslavia and more particularly in its autonomous province of Kosovo2, the official narratives of the Liberation Struggle supported the process of legitimization of dominant ideology and created a unifying symbolic order for a new society. In this sense, commemoration had a strong ideological connotation in order to conflate the memory of civilian causalities with the people's liberation struggle and the socialist revolution, thus creating patriotic discourse was intended to bind the country together (Duda, 2010).
War memorials and monuments of different types appeared all over socialist Yugoslavia and created an invisible network of remembrance and identity. The most important sites have become destinations of patriotic tourism -visited by millions every year and associated with huge print runs of tourist propaganda productions such as maps, guidebooks and postcards (almost every postcard produced in socialist Yugoslavia, apart from commercial tourist attractions, presented a nearby monument or memorial). The widespread creation of memorial centers further industrialized this culture of commemoration. The great importance of these sites and their commemorative function made this a political project of preserving the cultural memory of the antifascist struggle to anticipate participatory practices and strategies that were discussed in the previous parts of this paper.
Parallel to the development of patriotic tourism -with its first peak at the end of the 1940s and the revival of applying the ideology of brotherhood and unity again in social and cultural fields in the 1960s and 1970s -might be seen as the process of building new memorials and monuments. New commissions to commemorate sites of mass killings or guerrilla warfare were contracted in the 1960s and 1970s. As I found out through comparative analysis of the collected materials, most of them are characterized -in collaboration with architects -by a central sculptural object that is usually associated with urban design.
In this paper my main interest is the ideological notion of Albanian-Serbian partisanship and brotherhood and its expression in the visual and popular culture of Yugoslavia, in particular Kosovo. The chosen memorials in Mitrovica and Landovica are the main monuments that relate directly to Albanian-Serbian relations3. However, we could mention some more monuments in the territory of Kosovo that are the material representation of the ideology of brotherhood and unity and have been named as such (Uroševac/Ferizaj, Prishtina, Peć/Peja, Karagač, Lipjan). Most of these monuments were toppled immediately after the war in Kosovo in 1999 as an expression of rejection of Yugoslav heritage. For these reasons, I will refer to two case studies that entirely fulfil the interpretational model of commemoration and cultivation of Albanian-Serbian brotherhood in Yugoslav ideology. (1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)

in Mitrovica
In 2017, I visited Mitrovica (in the north part of Kosovo on the border with Serbia) relatively late -five years after my first study visit to Kosovo. I started my fieldwork by contacting the Museum of Mitrovica, which is located in the south part of the city. My main interest was related to the war monuments of 1999 as I was developing my research on the last war in Kosovo, as it is called in general Kosovo-Albanian discourse. However, my attention was attracted by an uncanny concrete structure that is visible from all parts of this hybrid city ( fig. 2.). The first confusion about this object comes with the naming problem that appears in both parts of the city: Albanian and Serbian. Whenever I tried to talk about this monument among the citizens of Mitrovica, I was faced with different terms defining its symbolic function and meaning. It was precisely this naming problem that made it so strongly appealing to me. This is how -through multi-layered perception of a monument -one can unleash the whole history of a city that is abundant in inter-ethnic and inter-cultural components. It shows the process of divisions between native populations and the dynamics of particular and common values that were transformed during different periods and power systems. This is also how the imagined sense of ethno-national identity has been communicated on both sides of the river.
When referring to his monument in Mitrovica, which was built between 1960 and 1973, Bogdan Bogdanović claimed: This was one of my most complicated projects. It took some ten or twelve years from the first sketches to realization. The monument is dedicated to the Partisans. The two pylons were often interpreted as a Serb and an Albanian figure. In my interactions with the local clients, Serbs and Albanians seemed to work well together; later, I found it very painful when the trouble in Kosovo began. I wanted to symbolize a gateway or entrance. The main generator for the form was space -the enormous open space with fantastic depth overlooking the city. I explored many different directions before I came up with this version, which stands its own ground against the vast empty space. As it turns out, it now sits precisely on the border between the Serb and Albanian parts of the city (Kulić & Thaler, 2018, p. 60).
The Shrine to the Fallen Serb and Albanian Partisans (1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973) that was designed for Mitrovica (Kosovo) in the oral narratives of the citizens of the city is nowadays usually referred to as the Miners' Monument, the Monument on the Hill, or Partisans' Hill. In a guidebook promoting Kosovo that was published in 1982, it is described as a memorial site of Partisans, while sometimes the names are merged and it is referred to as the monument of Miners-Partisans. However, in contemporary identity discourses the original name given by the author of the monument barely appears. According to data gathered by Vladimir Kulić (Kulić & Stierli, 2018) and published on the occasion of the exhibition in MoMA in New York (Toward a concrete utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948Yugoslavia -1980Yugoslavia , 2018Yugoslavia -2019, the monument of Mitrovica is dedicated to the fallen ethnic Albanian and Serb Partisans, members of a miners' platoon. As the author explains, "They successfully sabotaged the extraction of zinc and lead ore from the Trepča mines, which the occupying German forces needed for weapons production" (Kulić & Stierli, 2018, p. 58).
This oral disparity of the seemingly unimportant shifts in the name of the Mitrovica monument presents the widespread phenomenon of the denial of the heritage of Yugoslavia (mostly among Albanians) and the strengthening of particularisms above the commons. Moreover, this is followed by more radical acts of toppling the unwanted heritage of Yugoslavia and its main brotherhood and unity slogan as a consequence of the traumatic war experiences in Kosovo, which are exemplified in the displacement of monuments in recent years in the public space of Kosovo.
The reason for introducing the monument in Mitrovica lays in complementing the knowledge of the semantics of "the border space". Its complexity and symbolic contextualization go far beyond the remembrance of World War II, as referred to by the artist Bogdan Bogdanović, and was intended to indicate interactions between Serbian and Albanian communities in the form of a gate or entrance. Thus, more than any other this particular monument can be perceived an example of verification of the ideological and aesthetic transformation of the system of representations of war and analysis of the mechanisms of their promotion in the collective memory.

Memorial of Boro and Ramiz in Landovica (1963)
An example that I would like particularly refer to in my analysis of performances of patriotic tourism crowned by the slogan of brotherhood and unity is the story of two partisans: Boro Vukmirović (Serbian of Montenegrin origin), the Regional Committee Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in Kosovo, and Ramiz Sadiku (ethnic Albanian), member of the Bureau of the same Committee. Both were captured and executed in Landovica by Italian Fascists on April 10, 1943, while they were on their way from Gjakova to Prizren to meet Belgrade's envoy Svetovar (Tempo) Vukmanović. In socialist Yugoslavia they became a symbol of Albanian and Serbian brotherhood and their story was explored in many ways in material and non-material culture in both the Serbian and Albanian languages (oral history, poems, novels, busts, monuments, buildings, etc.).
As an example of the ideology of brotherhood and unity, figures of Boro and Ramiz have been present in a great number of patriotic poems, two of which are worth mentioning: "Boro and Ramiz"4 by Adem Gejtani, which is mostly accessible in the Serbian language, and "Ramiz, Comrade"5 by Esad Mekuli, which was popularized in school books until late 1980s in the Albanian language. Most interestingly, during my fieldwork in Kosovo when researching the cultural presence of Boro and Ramiz, most of my interviewees still remembered the lines of the poem that was obligatory to learn by heart in primary school in the 1980s. Moreover, despite the negative attitude towards Yugoslav heritage in today's Kosovo, the myth of Boro and Ramiz still brings rather positive memories. Courtesy of Archive of the Republic of Kosovo 4 Jedno smo nebo / dva lista s iste grane / dva kamička iz iste rijeke / čiste Bistrice / dva tijela iz iste krvi / prečiste krvi Dukađina / prsti sa iste ruke / jedna smo lasta / ja desno krilo njeno / ti njeno lijevo krilo / oči moje tvoje trepavice / tvoji nabori moje čelo / pričaju o putevima u budućnost / pričaju o putevima ka slobodi / Pušketaše nas / od istog smo metka pali -/ jer šta sam ja bez tebe / šta je jedno krilo / bez drugog krila. (Adem Gajtani). Literal translation made by the author: We are one sky / two leaves from the same branch / two little stones from the same river / the clear Bistrica River / two bodies of same blood / pure clean blood of the Dukadjins / fingers from the same hand / together we are a bird (swallow) / I am its right wing / you are its left / my eyes, your eyelashes / your crinkle, my forehead / they speak of roads to the future / they speak of roads to freedom / They gunned us down / we fell from the same bullet / because, what am I without you / what is one wing / without another wing.
5 Landovicë, a i pe dy trima? / Landovicë, a të rroki shungullima? / A pe, oj, në pritë -/ në luftën që s'e ndanë, / nën plumbat e tradhëtarit / Boro e Ramizi kur ranë? / Me ty lulzoi vllaznimi, / dora dorës iu shtri… (fragment, Esad Mekuli). Literal translation made by the author: Landovica, have you seen those two heroes? / Landovica, have you been struck by a thunder? / o have you seen them in ambush -/ the fight that they didn't leave apart / under the bullets of a traitor / Boro and Ramiz when did they die / With you brotherhood is in blossom / they lied down hand in hand… In November 1963, as stated before with an atmosphere of a recurrence of the official narrative of Liberation Struggle, on the 20 th anniversary of the death of Boro and Ramiz, the Yugoslav authorities -thanks to the lobbying of local government and veterans' associations -decided to erect a monument and memorial6 site at the entrance to the village of Landovica ( fig. 3.). The monument was created by 3 artists: Miodrag Pecić, Svetomira Arsić Basara and Hilmija Qatoviqi. The monument was officially unveiled to the public on November 30th, 1963, an event which was attended by Josip Broz Tito and included a reading by Albanian poet Adem Gajtani of his work dedicated to the two comrades, entitled "Boro and Ramiz". The altarlike memorial, with its ten-meter-tall concrete sculpture of a stylized twoheaded figure, suggests religious devotion, in this case the civil religion of the "active victimhood" of the partisans, in the words of Miranda Jakiša (2015, p. 17).
Certain sources (mostly oral and photographic)7 recount that when this monument stood in its original condition, it bore an inscription that was engraved directly onto its concrete façade: In greeting postcards from Prizren, the Landovica memorial comes to be also a signpost for the city as much as other older or more urban sites ( fig. 4.). The memorial also appears alongside the post-war motels and restaurants Vllazrimi, Liria, and Sputnik, both of which are modern but modest buildings in style and size -in harmony with Prizren's small scale (Return to Sender, n.d.)  http://oralhistorykosovo.org/return-to-sender-second-world-war-memorials-and -the-cities-in-postcards/ One of the most spectacular performances that is worth mentioning as an example of the official narrative of brotherhood and unity in practice was a march organized in May 1986 to commemorate the remembrance of Josip Broz Tito by the Youth of Yugoslavia. This explicit example of combining the idea of secular pilgrimage and patriotic tourism took a route from Belgrade to Landovica and Vitromirica in Kosovo. It was associated with the 26th meeting of pioneers of Yugoslavia in Landovica; there were official rituals characteristic of socialist states, fanfares of victory, the raising of the flags of the organization, large images of Josip Broz Tito and, in a gesture of unity, a circle surrounding the monument of Boro and Ramiz was created ( fig. 5.).

Conclusions
Through a functional analysis of art, the presented paper aims to explore relations between communities and their monuments and the consequences of these relations in the historical perspective. I aimed to present a selection of commemorating models and the socio-political changes they bring as a result. When analyzing the historical context, the ideological aspects, and the social practices bound by official narratives of socialist Yugoslavia, my goal was to present the performative functions of monuments with a special focus on the shrines to fallen Albanian and Serb partisans. I referred to two crucial examples of the memorials of Mitrovica and Landovica, one on the north and the other on the south of Kosovo, both of which are confronted with the narratives of borderlands and conflicted areas. Finally, I wanted to show how politically driven narratives and rituals can establish a kind of engaged spectatorship for their own purposes, i.e. to build an imagined sense of ethnonational identity.
Public commemoration has transformed the public from a passive audience into active participants. Memorialization or commemoration is different than performativity (the intent to effect, to make something happen or go further -events that attempt to cause social change). The omnipresence of the brotherhood and unity slogan in Yugoslav public space has been intensified, as I show in this paper, not just by material culture (monuments and memorials), which are vanishing from the public gaze in today's Kosovo or are being covered with representations of the last war (1999), but also by oral manifestations and collective memory, mostly in the generations that grew up in Yugoslavia.
Examples that I refer to in this paper underline the far more complex interplay between official and personal memory in how these memorials have been utilized since their construction. They can also serve as a starting point for the further analysis (also in other geographies) of the evolution of memorials and how the treatment of grief and the representation of war has developed over the course of time. Moreover, they give an interesting insight into performing monuments -the way in which monuments associated with rituals and individual or official performances appear in the public gaze.