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The Museum of Yugoslav Ships

Online project

2009

The aim of the project The Museum of Yugoslav Ships – Sava Promenade was to depict the state of Serbian society after the Second World War using a mixture of satire and realism in a form of a fictive museum including a series of photos and texts. The Museum of Yugoslav Ships was the first “museum” in Belgrade whose exhibition was entirely set in an open space. Numerous exhibits found in the natural setting depicted social, political and personal circumstances before the fall of Yugoslavia and the life after it ceased to exist as a country in a unique way. Everyone who, after visiting this Museum in open, wanted to find out more about the circumstances surrounding the exhibits, had an opportunity to see a virtual exhibition of texts and photographs explaining the context of the exhibition.   This is the first City Guerilla project inspired by the situation in Savamala. The initial idea was to make a unique museum in the open out of the cemetery of river fleet ships which had for years been lying on the Sava’s coast. The idea included boards for every ship which would tell of its history, ropes which would enclose the ships (typical for museum exhibits of great value) and the opening ceremony for this non-existent Museum which members of the city government would be invited to participate in. Due to the fact that it was not possible to obtain the necessary permits for the realization of this project, the Museum was moved to the Internet, where the ships were divided into three zones - blue, white and red, whose symbolism was taken from the flag of Yugoslavia.   The Museum of Yugoslav Ships was presented for public in 2011 at the Night of Museums, at the exhibition at the Goethe-Institut. On that occasion, several models of ships made especially for the former president of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, were shown, provided by the Museum of the History of Yugoslavia. In the meantime, the ship cemetery disappeared off the coast of Sava. As part of preparations for the construction works for the Government of Serbia project entitled “Belgrade Waterfront”, all ships were removed in 2015 during the action of “cleaning” of the Sava coast.

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