3 - Countering Post-industrial Capitalism in the Former Yugoslavia through Art: The Example of the Mural Factories to the Workers

Summary

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is the mural painted in ITAS Prvomajska, a factory in north-west Croatia. I base my interpretation on interviews with its creators and the curators who commissioned it, as well as ethnographic research on worker ownership in ITAS. The mural is linked to the history of ITAS and, more broadly, to the socialist self-management legacy of Yugoslavia and the post-socialist trajectory of Croatia. I examine how the artist collective KURS avoids the pitfalls of what they see as aestheticization of the ITAS struggle. I also consider a potential limitation of the mural's effectiveness in the post-industrial present in cases when the audience lacks understanding of the context of the elements of the mural.

Keywords: mural; labour struggles; socialism; post-socialism; Croatia; Yugoslavia

Introduction

If you were visiting ITAS Prvomajska and only knew it as a metalwork factory, you would probably expect to see hulking machine tools, pallets with metal workpieces waiting for the next step in the production process, and workers in blue overalls coughing as a result of inhaling metal dust day in and day out. These are the typical trappings of an industrial shop floor. What you would likely not expect to see is a brightly coloured mural in the heart of the factory. The mural is one in a series of idiosyncrasies that make this factory different from most in Croatia. It is devoted to ITAS (Ivanec Machine Tool Factory) workers’ effort to save their workplace from the brink of demise that was the predicament of so many other manufacturing companies in Croatia. After years of struggle with the previous owner that culminated in a bankruptcy process, ITAS workers were legally recognized as owners of their enterprise in 2007.

The ITAS workers’ story has attracted the attention of numerous activists, artists, journalists, and scholars, in Croatia and abroad, who have promoted it as a successful case of resistance to private ownership. Over twentyone months between 2015 and 2018, I conducted ethnographic research focusing on transnational political economic changes, legal and discursive shifts in Croatia and beyond, and material transformations within the company to understand how workers encountered limitations imposed by hegemonic practices in peripheral capitalism. During this research, I became interested in the mural Factories to the Workers, and how it came to embody a type of artistic practice that aims to counter post-industrial capitalism in the former Yugoslavia.