Where Them Stray Dogs At

The book Where Them Stray Dogs At presents the work of a collective of authors who perceive Belgrade as a conceptual starting point. Although the book's theme is rooted in a specific location, it explores broader meanings and identities that have long been attributed to the so-called Balkans as a cultural region. Through various approaches, the authors create a series of fragmentary yet inevitably interconnected commentaries on topics such as authenticity, migration, urban transformation, and Balkanism.

The book's subtitle, Liminal Thoughts on Balkanism, Gentrification, and Nostalgia, suggests the transitory nature of the unanchored, almost stray, perspectives of its authors. Through reflections on their own positions and the tensions between personal and collective narratives, the various approaches in the book interweave into a layered examination of liminal spaces—between development and decline, past and present, belonging and alienation.

The book was preceded by an exhibition project of the same name in 2023 at the FFA Gallery, featuring works by the authors of its chapters: Jiří Gruber, Barbora Ilič, Risto Ilić, Tamara Spalajković, and Milica Živković. The exhibition explored the ways in which Belgrade is simultaneously romanticized and exploited—whether by newcomers or by those who live in and actively shape the city. This theme carried over into the book, which approaches the subject not only critically but also with understanding, aiming to comprehend the transformations, motivations, and contexts from which common stereotypes about Belgrade arise. Incorporating personally motivated and often intimate texts, the book also serves as a basis for understanding the current events and protests taking place in Belgrade.

Risto Ilić's chapter focuses on the city's physical transformation. Through research interviews with figures from Belgrade’s cultural scene, he maps the disappearance of significant buildings and urban areas and the impact on the ability for self-organization and collective resistance. Barbora Ilič, in several chapters that serve as guiding texts throughout the book, attempts to understand what attracts newcomers—whether tourists or members of the diaspora—to Belgrade. Reflecting on her own platonic relationship with the city, she examines the notion of existential foreignness and the contemporary aestheticization of nostalgia, particularly its growing popularity on social media. Tamara Spalajković’s chapter continues in this vein with an intimate exploration of migrant identity and the paradoxical emotions tied to returning “home.” Through notes from a journey back to her native Belgrade, she conveys the alienating atmosphere of bureaucracy and the physical and abstract borders that precede the possibility of an imagined return.

The idea of Belgrade as a place that promises home yet also holds trauma is also reflected in Milica Živković’s chapter. In her text and accompanying poem, she addresses female identity within “Balkan” culture from the 1990s to the present and its influence on the romanticization of toxic relationships—whether with a city, a country, or real people. In contrast, Jiří Gruber, drawing on his own experience of living in Belgrade, focuses on male stereotypes associated with Serbia and their commercialization, particularly through the so-called “Slavic” accent.