ПРЕКРАЈАЊЕ ПРОШЛОСТИ: КУЛТУРНА БИОГРАФИЈА ЈЕДНОГ МУЗЕЈСКОГ ПРЕДМЕТА
REWRITING THE PAST: A CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY OF A MUSEUM OBJECT

Summary/Abstract: This study, starting from the cultural biography of men’s underpants from Prizren, explores how material objects become key actors in the processes of meaning production, value change and articulation of cultural memory. Relying on the theoretical frameworks of the social life of things and the cultural biographies of objects, the paper analyses how a clothing artifact mediates between the private and the public, the family and the institutional, the traditional and the contemporary, as well as between the gendered spheres – male and female. The trajectory of this object – from unworn underwear from the first decades of the 20th century, through family preservation and creative adaptation into hippie pants during the 1980s, to musealization in the 21st century – sheds light on the complex mechanisms of status and semantic changes. His biography includes two periods of ”passive duration”, in which clothes are not actively used, but still carry a symbolic meaning, as well as one moment of ”activation”, when he reappears in a fashion context. This dynamic makes it possible to consider the relationship between ”fashion” and ”non-fashion”, use and archiving, personal memory and final musealization as an institutional form of representation. In the museum context, the object takes on a new role: it is no longer just a custodian of family memory, but becomes a means of cultural interpretation. Its value shifts from the utilitarian to the symbolic and narrative field, thus becoming an active medium in the processes of constructing gender, generational and cultural identity. Thus, these trousers become not only a museum exhibit, but also a testimony to the dynamics of cultural change and the durability of individual creativity within the collective memory. The relationship between the personal and the collective, the intimate and the institutional, is clearly reflected in the treatment of the clothing artefact in the museum context. As the example of Prizren underpants shows, the materiality of clothing is often examined and interpreted not only through its form and function, but also as a carrier of social values, emotions, gender roles and identity positions. The example of Prizren’s underpants testifies that material objects are neither silent nor static – they have their own social life, participate in the circulation of meanings and mediate between different cultural worlds. As archives, witnesses and storytellers, such objects allow culture not only to be remembered, but also to be reinterpreted, renewed and transformed.

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