UGM Seminar / Lecture dr. Svetlana Slapšak
LECTURE / »Shoulder to shoulder«, images of equality in socialist realism and in socialist cultures
Thursday, 27 August 2015, at 18:00
UGM| Maribor Art Gallery, Strossmayerjeva 6
Lecture by: dr. Svetlana Slapšak, anthropologist
The figure and its visual configuration originate from old images of ancient Mediterranean cultures: two oxen that work together attached to a yoke. Etymology and semantics, which denote »union« (from Greek zygon, sy-zygos, from Latin jugum, con-jugalis), teach us that the word originates directly from agricultural practices – plowing. Does this mean that matrimonial union is younger than agriculture? The shoulder is a mythical part of the body, a symbolic carrier/power, and as such it has been used in antiquity as well as in Christianity (Saint Christopher). In this regard, the socialist culture uses once more archetypal myths and all the semiotic »luggage« of the past in order to produce a new and quite successful myth with an image.
Dr. Svetlana Slapšak holds a PhD in classical studies from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. She was a lecturer of gender studies and anthropology of antiquity at the Institute of humanities in Ljubljana. Since 1996 she is teaching gender studies and anthropology of antiquity at the Faculty for humanities in Ljubljana.
The lecture will be in Slovenian.
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