Socialist Architecture: The Vanishing Act is a collaborative project between photographer Armin Linke and architect Srdjan Jovanovic´ Weiss. They have worked together since 2009 to visit selected locations of former Yugoslav socialist architecture in order to document the condition they are in today. The Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia vanished during the early 1990s and was balkanized into a number of emerging democracies and former socialist states. Each of these new states inherited monuments, buildings, landscapes and infrastructure which were specifically constructed for former socialist conditions and representations. After Yugoslavia vanished, most of the inherited architecture was left vacant and in a state of limbo between repurpose and reuse or simply continuing as a modern archaeological ruin. By creating documentation, The Vanishing Act captures the indecision facing five particular emerging democracies today: Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. It also records the distinct effects their irresolution creates in terms of the spatial experience as well as the fate of former Yugoslav ideological architecture.
