Gaps, Or the Dialectics of Inter-imperial Art: The Case of the Belgrade Surrealist Circle

This article reflects on the challenges posed to literary studies by cases of inter-imperial positionality: their repercussions on our understanding of lived temporalities, the strategies we use to translate this understanding into art and fiction, and the critical tools we deploy to evaluate thus produced artworks. To assist in these ruminations I make operational the category of inter-imperiality and tackle the phenomena of placedness, translatability, and the futurity of artwork. My guides are the multi-ethnic history of the Belgrade district called Dorćol and four modernist artworks from the region: the Yugoslav surrealists’ piece of engagement art "Facing a Wall: A Simulation of the Paranoiac Delirium of Interpretation. Survey" ("Pred jednim zidom: Simulacija paranojačkog delirijuma interpretacije. Anketa, 1932"); two 1935 photographs by Vane Bor; and Marko Ristić’s 1928 anti-novel Without a Measure (Bez mere, 1928).