Bootleg Futures — The Pilgrimage | Pionirsko Hodočašće
2022-23 Mellon Faculty Grant
Injecting missing pieces of the past into the datasets used by predictive algorithms in order to influence the future of architecture
About
In Bootleg Futures, Ana Miljački and her Critical Broadcasting Lab team explore a set of realities in architectural culture using contemporary and historical archives.
Bootleg Futures puts forth the question: what if new data was tweaked, hacked, and strategically added into the stream of conversations about architecture? When minor narratives, decoys, and mirrors enter the data set, any AI-based prediction of the future will have to contend with them. By experimenting with these archives, the CBL team hopes to instigate conversation about the ways in which AI technologies intersect architectural tools and narratives to critical and cultural ends.
The first large project in the Bootleg series, The Pilgrimage | Pionirsko Hodočašće, was exhibited in the Palazzo Mora, one of the venues of the European Cultural Center in Venice, on the occasion of the 2023 Architecture Venice Biennial, and is on view at the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, Serbia in summer 2025.
Schedule
Events
Exhibition
The Pilgrimage | Pionirsko Hodočašće
June 24 – September 1, 2025
Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade, Serbia
Past Events
Bootleg Futures: The Pilgrimage
Exhibited as part of The Laboratory of the Future
2023 Architecture Venice Biennial
Palazzo Mora, Venice, Italy
On view: May 20 – November 26, 2023
Collaborators
Ana Miljački is a critic, curator, and Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, where she teaches history, theory, and design and directs the MArch Program. Her research interests range from the role of architecture and architects in the Cold War era Eastern Europe, through the theories of postmodernism in late socialism to politics of contemporary architectural production.
Biography: MIT Architecture Department
Website: www.anamiljacki.com
Critical Broadcasting Lab is a space and a platform for the production of discursive interventions in architecture culture. Its key medium is the architectural exhibition, broadened to include experiments with the entire contemporary ecology of broadcasting media. Its aim is to critique the contemporary, expose its deep histories, and mount a form of a strategic preparation for the possibility of seeing and thinking a better and more just future for, and through, architecture.
Website: criticalbroadcast.net
Social: Instagram
The mission of the Museum of Yugoslavia is to be a place of open dialogue, to exchange knowledge and experiences on the social and cultural phenomena of the 20th century with all institutions, organizations, and individuals interested in issues of Yugoslav heritage and Yugoslav past. Through its programs and activities, the museum encourages social memory and a culture of remembrance related to the development of the Yugoslav idea, since the creation of the Yugoslav state as a kingdom until its breakup in the early 1990s.
Website: https://muzej-jugoslavije.org/en/
Credits
Critical Broadcasting Lab Team and Immediate Collaborators:
Ana Miljački, PhD, Professor of Architecture, MIT
Ous Abour Ras, MArch Candidate, MIT
Julian Geltman, MArch, MIT
Calvin Zhong, MArch Candidate, MIT
Pavle Dinulović, Assistant Professor, Department of Sound Recording and Design, Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade
Melika Konjičanin, Assistant, School of Architecture Sarajevo
Ana Bakić, Assistant Professor, Head of Department of Drawing and Visual Design, Faculty of Architecture, Zagreb
Museum of Yugoslavia collaborators:
Neda Knežević, Director
Marija Djorgović, Head of the Department for Communication and Program Development
Simeona Ognjenović, Curator
Supported by a Mellon Faculty Grant and an International Exhibition Grant from the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST).