Kultura
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The Kultura Journal is an international scientific journal for the theory and sociology of culture and cultural policy, which follows culture in the widest sense of the word where science, education and all human activities are taken as its integral part.
It was started in 1968 courtesy to the efforts of Stevan Majstorović, founder of the Centre for Studies in Cultural Development, with the objective to encourage integrative, analytical and critical interpretations of the modern cultural phenomena.
At the time of its establishment, the Kultura Journal was unique in the domain of intellectual thought both in terms of its concept and its design. Since the first issue, i.e. over the fifty years of its existence, Kultura has been and has remained open to creative ideas from the country and the world, as seen from the texts of important foreign authors and contributions from professionals coming from the cultural centres of former Yugoslavia, as well as domestic authors who offered new ideas and approaches to culture. The recognizable design solution of the logo of the journal and its cover page were created by the artist and calligraphist Božidar Bole Miloradović, for the very first number.
As of 1971, the issues were edited thematically, which has been dominant practice to this date, with the aim of enriching certain thematic fields in our cultural and scientific community.
The first Editorial Board of the Kultura Journal consisted of eleven members, led by the Editor-in Chief Stevan Majstorović and Trivo Inđić, as conceptual instigators of the journal which heralded a new orientation in the intellectual field. Members of the Editorial Board were: Slobodan Canić, Dragutin Gostuški, Vujadin Jokić, Danica Mojsin, Mirjana Nikolić, Nebojša Popov, Bogdan Tirnanić, Milan Vojnović and Tihomir Vučković. Over the five decades of the Kultura Journal, editorial boards changed several times.
Kultura is issued every three months (four times a year) and its printing has been financed by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia since 2001. With support of the competent ministry, all numbers of this journal, from the first to the last issue, were digitalized in 2009. As a result, a DVD containing digital form of the journal, was available with the issue No. 129, titled "Electronic libraries". A few years later, in 2013, Kultura switched to the Cyrillic script, with an important note that it still published in Latin script those authors from the region who originally use Latin script(Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia). With the issue No. 140, on the occasion of marking the 45th anniversary of the Kultura Journal, a special USB was made available, with all the texts from the numbers 1-137. The web page of the Centre for Studies in Cultural Development contains all the texts ever published in any issue of the Kultura Journal over half a century of its existence.
The Department for Registration of Journals of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, the Kultura Journal was registered in 2005 (when categorisation of scientific journals started) marked as category P53. In 2010,it was registered as category M52 in the group of journals for history, art,history, ethnology and archaeology. At the beginning of July 2012, the journal advanced to the category of national interest, by Decision of the Ministry of education, science and technological development of the Republic of Serbia (M51).
Kultura is regularly deposited with the Repository of the National Library of Serbia, and since 2010, it has been included in the Serbian Quotation Index, where the texts published in Kultura can be found in full digital form. As of 2011, the texts i.e. scientific articles, apart from the regular UDK (universal decimal classification) also carry specific DOI (Digital Object Identifier) codes, that allow for their greater visibility and international indexing under international standards. In the meantime,electronic version of the journal was started i.e. the first steps were made towards electronic edition by CEON (Service for monitoring, measuring and valorisation of scientific journals) through Aseestant electronic editing programme. This has contributed to the quality of published articles, as the editorial board now have at their disposal adequate programmes for text checking in terms of correct citation sand listings of references as well as prevention of plagiarism.
Kultura is regularly delivered to the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade, Belgrade City Library,University Library "Svetozar Marković" in Belgrade, Library of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, Library of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, Library of the Rectorate of the University of Arts in Belgrade, University Library in Niš and University Library in Kragujevac. The Kultura Journalis regularly received by numerous interested institutions of culture (libraries, theatres, museums, culture centres) as well as individuals. The Journal nurtures professional exchanges with many similar institutions and magazines in the country, region and in Europe (Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia,Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland and other countries).
In addition to respecting scientific rules and standards for publishing scientific papers, Kultura has not lost the curiosity or the freshness of an avant-garde magazine dealing with both eternal and very actual topics.
Pages
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- About the golden ratio spiral and the Fibonacci sequence
- The golden ratio spiral is a proportionate code of nature which grows by Fibonacci sequence of numbers and reflects a balance in the geometry of space, time, matter and information. The golden ratio is a building tool which, as a collection of spirals in the form of ether toruses, creates fractal repetitive structures of electro-magnetic energy weaving a gigantic hologram matrix throughout the universe. It is a perfect measure which argues that the whole relates to the part in the same way in which the part relates to the whole.
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- Accounting analysis of expenditure budget funding for culture in Serbia
- Establishment of a system for monitoring of the execution of budgetary expenses allocated to culture as a segment of executive rule is a basic form of support to its development in the Republic of Serbia. Inadequacy of the present accounting system is caused by procedures and legal restrictions which complicate and fail to stimulate development of the cultural sector. Focusing on the budget as a fundamental financial institute we will discuss to which degree the cultural needs can be satisfied.
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- Adaptation, evolution, revolution
- In the first part, the author discusses the question of reading and reading culture in Serbia, the difference between readers and non-readers, the essential importance of reading to the survival of the individual. In the second part, the author considers the challenges facing libraries today, the need of their adaptation to a new information environment, the evolution that is so profound and far-reaching that it is almost revolutionary by its character, the virtual world that becomes more real than the physical one. In the third part, the author shows that libraries do not serve only living men, but also robots, refers to the secret of success of the National Library of Serbia and concludes that changes are so radical that they actually represent a revolutionary shift.
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- Adherence to resistance in the music of popular culture
- A division of cultural events to high and low, as well as differences between the established and popular culture, are subject to a number of interpretations of cultural theories. The right-wing critical thought defended the "real" culture from the crude culture of the lower social classes, while the leftists found mass culture positive for its democratization. Thanks to the impact of the global media, position of music occupies a high place in the hierarchy of industry and market culture. The opposed relationship of art and popular music is being relativized in terms of class identification. The ideology of taste, which is also related to the possession of a larger or smaller cultural capital, has adapted to the requirements of populism and market. Agreeing to concessions is a kind of democratization of elite musical forms (for example opera), and movement of various musical forms in the system of two-way (higher / lower) and circular (from one form to another) forms representing both resistance and compliance in mutual encounter and permeation of classical and popular music, both in practice and in theory. With the exception of the avant-garde "outages" in classical music or lowest genres of folk, all other types of music (classical, jazz, rock, pop, folk) have found some sort of balance in their relationship. Along with the general crisis of the spirit of criticism, this certainly contributed to value relativism, as one of the essential features of popular culture.
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- Aestetic utopia of William Moris
- The aim of this paper is to show the cultural and intellectual relevance of thought of William Morris at the beginning of the third millennium. It is primarily exposed in his novel 'News from Nowhere', which is a utopian vision of a society whose main feature is concomitant aestheticism and simplification of life in an age that could be called post-post-industrial. The first part of the paper analyses elements of the intellectual biography of William Morris and points to a fundamental diversity of understanding of and reception of his work over the past hundred and fifty years. The paper then analyzes the main features of his utopian imagination and exposes arguments that speak in favor of their permanent relevance. The final part of the paper confirms the claim that William Morris was primarily a morrist - a term which denotes its original synthesis of romanticism, Marxism and utopianism.
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- Aesthetic phenomenon and art
- Analyzing complete works author attempts to demonstrate Marcuse's conceivement of aesthetic phenomena and art with the emphasis on the relation of art and revolution. In the article attention is firstly drawn to Marcuse's doctoral dissertation. This text has significance in that Marcuse already here discerns a periphery subject (artist) as a subject of liberation. Author then offers a detailed examination of orphicnarcissistic civilization. That is the origin of aestheticsensuous revolution within framework of Freud's theory. A status of art in capitalistic and in a version of socialistic society is then examined. While in the capitalistic society art is banalised by mass consumption in the socialist society art is instrumentally used for glorification and preservation of political order. Finally, author analyses qualitative change into society of aesthetic ethos which is rendered possible by sensitive cooperation of art and technology. Author's intention is to offer critical, coherent and contextually situated interpretation of Marcuse's art and aesthetic revolution.
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- Aesthetics and media philosophy
- This text deals with the relation between the aesthetics and the philosophy of the media, in a number of ways. First of all, the article shows that the philosophy of the media has been first recognized in the domain of aesthetics, or more precisely, modern aesthetics. Then, it determines the subject of research, in relation to aesthetics as the preceding discipline. In terms of research methods, the paper continues with a comparison between aesthetics and the media philosophy. Namely, the media philosophy, in contrast to aesthetics, appears exclusively in the context of interdisciplinary research. Also, the philosophy of the media is related to the aesthetics of communication, and is then considered in relation to the media aesthetics. It turns out that the philosophy of the media really uses the same repertoire of issues as the aesthetics, but additionally poses those questions that relate to new aesthetics i.e. the media reality. Such reality is, as we well know, a result of technology. The media philosophy, however, does not question just the artificially or technologically produced sensibility, it also deals with the theories that define such sensibility. This is why the media philosophy is an opinion of an opinion that studies the entire domain of the media, including different theories of the media. And finally the media philosophy, which is definitely more than a mere aesthetics of the media since it has its own epistemological, ontological, ethical and other aspects of study, is most of all based on the critique of the media as well as the background of the media - which is the world of the capital. It is, therefore, an engaged theory whose starting point is in aesthetics and the outcome in a critical questioning of the sphere of sensibility generated in the media.
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- Aesthetics of the invisible
- Definitions of comic media that have been brushed aside over the years and decades in order to define the media as clearly and accurately as possible are being revised due to technological modifications of the comics. Comic authors emerged in the late 1960s in America (and 1970s in Yugoslavia). They were mostly organized in groups who won the stage with experimental approaches and were institutionally accepted. Alternative expression in Serbia has peaked in the 1990s, when that pole of expression overwhelmed almost the entire scene. After the 2000s, when the International Comics Salon was established in Belgrade (in 2003), an important space for action was formed in the field of experimentation, as it established an incentive "prize for innovation in comics" that motivated authors to advance their avantgarde research. Notwithstanding the freshness of ideas throughout the fifteen years of the Salon existence, only a handful of authors have achieved more notable accomplishments: A. Ćurić with the realization of the concept of spatial comics (2007), and A. Gajić who received the Grand Prix for the first time in the history of the Salon for his experimental work "Rewinding" (2012). At the University of Arts in Belgrade, several authors (D. Kuprešanin - Faculty of Fine Arts/Faculty of Applied Arts; V Veljašević - Faculty of Fine Arts) have developed in their PhD researches similar concepts in different media - comics in space and unnarrative comics. Since 2013, Kuprešanin has also introduces a novelty with the concept of experimental tactile comics. Just like A. Ćurić deletes the concepts of classical media transfers into the structure of comics, so does D. Kuprešanin introduce novelty into the structure of the media with tactility and haptic adaptation (technological innovation) - this novelty is especially important not only because of the new way of structuring of the media itself, but also because it was the first time that the blind and partially sighted audiences were given the opportunity to read comics.
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- Aesthetics, communication and theories of reception
- This text analyses theories of reception, i.e. the aesthetics of communication within the art and media studies. Realistic, antirealistic and productivistic theories of reception, i.e. essentialist, ontological and relativistic, constructionist theories of reception were distinguished. Theoretical systems that treat piece of art as a source of communication are presented, for example: cognitive aesthetics (Ernst Gombrich), hermeneutics (Hans Robert Jauss), analytic aesthetics (Nelson Goodman), theory of the open art work (Umberto Eco), phenomenology (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), structuralism and poststructuralism (Roland Barhes), and also contemporary, interdisciplinary theories of vision and visual culture (Jonathan Crary, Norman Bryson, Martin Jay).
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- Affirmative media use of negative stereotypes
- The paper proposes an analysis of stereotype representations in the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) based on the Hegelian concept of concrete universal in comedy, which then constitutes the ground for reflection on the possibility of positive usage of negative stereotypes, the usage that would make possible to point out the mode in which the stereotypical constructions function, as well as possible way of their subversion within their own domain. We will claim that the character of Borat embodies the Western stereotype of a member of a poor non-capitalist country and that, when confronted with an embodiment of its own stereotypes and prejudices, it becomes evident that the Western society is reduced to nothing but stereotypes as well, but the ones that present themselves as unquestionable. This confrontation brings about a certain short circuit which is the basis for subversion that makes the mechanisms by which stereotypes function visible. As Borat is an embodiment of the above mentioned stereotype, an attempt to classify all the stereotypes in the movie must inevitably fail, because many of them converge in only one character or situation, which brings stereotypical representations to maximum but also to the point of absurd. Nevertheless we will claim that although it seems that the ethnical stereotype is dominant in the movie, it is actually the class stereotype that is the dominant one. The figure of concrete universal at which particular and universal merge is the figure which subverts the very structure in which it appears. Merely its presence in the structure makes the necessarily hidden function mechanisms of the structure visible. Borat is precisely such (concrete universal) character who in the current ideological constellation of dominating global capitalist pretensions points out the moment of potential subversion.
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- Algorithms, categories and proofs
- In this paper we focus on two branches of modern logic, computability theory and proof theory, tracing their development in Serbia from the end of World War II to this day. Owing to the unfortunate set of circumstances, computability theory did not give birth to a school in Serbia. Proof theory, on the other hand, found a base in Belgrade as one of the few places in the world promoting Gentzen's ideas, especially in the field of categorial proof theory which will be our sole interest in this work.
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- An ethical reading of visual symbols of architect Bogdan Bogdanović
- Analyzing various interviews given by the architect Bogdan Bogdanović, which were compiled in a book Glib i krv (Mud and Blood), we could discern two different images of Belgrade that he cherished in his mind. One was an image of a mythical city of old Celtic civilization, raised between the two rivers - the Danube and the Sava as male and the female symbols - which was a mixture of a futuristic modernism and prehistoric necropolis and settlements. The other image was imprinted with rough changes that the Yugoslav society underwent after 1983, which he had anticipated saying that almost all Balkan cities would end up like archeological sites, buried under ruins of a culture and history of many nations. This paper will also analyze the first monument raised in Belgrade in honour of the Jewish victims to fascism, and will try to discover a universal symbolic of the memorial monument this eminent architect built from 1960-1980. The intent is to offer an ethical reading of the almost forgotten language of symbols, visual signs and arts which partially justifies the nature of Man/Builder and Man/Destroyer found in all of us.