Malware of history: The encryption of the once and future violence in Novi Sad (Vojvodina, Serbia)

Abstract

The article explores a proliferation of architecture to commemorate the events of the Second World War atrocities and their aftermath in Novi Sad. Running serially along the left bank of the Danube are four memorials: a foundation for a controversial monument; a socialist-built, figurative sculptural complex; a cube without planning permission; and a construction site for a future multi-million memorial. Architecturally trivial monoliths are integral to three of them. The overuse of monoliths in memorialization is linked to their semantic opacity since a monolith might commemorate either victims or perpetrators of a violent event. What’s more, opacity makes commemorative monoliths prone to infection with the malware of history, a latency for political violence that haunts a city traversed by an ethno-nationalist politics of history. An analogic transposition between predatory intentionalities of traps and malware affords a reflection on menacing things and names of the dead as a revelatory technique of apophantic justice.