Life in the New: Dejan Pljevljakušić

Dejan Pljevljakušić glances at the ground-level basketball court below and takes a drag from his cigarette, quickly exhaling the smoke. From the balcony on the seventh floor, he often spots friends from the neighborhood drinking cans of lager and solving world problems while their children play together.

Strictly speaking, they don’t need to have children themselves. The court’s sideline is their evening gathering place, as it has always been. Dejan often participates, and like him, most of his friends grew up in the area and know every nook and cranny between the high-rises and the extensive concrete apartment buildings in Blok 23.

From the chair in his living room, he has three of the four emblematic high-rises of the neighborhood as a backdrop, massive grids of concrete and glass. He lives in the first one. The household dog, Roxy, is gnarling from her bed on the windowsill. “She’s in fact very good, but she’s afraid all the time,” he says and gives her a treat. “And that’s the key to everything; the stomach.” Roxy is a mixed breed – “I got it to prevent my wife from getting a Pomeranian.”

He relocated to an apartment on the 18th floor of Blok 23 from Blok 63. It required renovation as the previous owner kept seven dogs and twenty cats. “The stench was unbearable,” he says, “we had to strip all the walls down to the concrete; we were afraid that we wouldn’t be able to get rid of the smell.” At that time, his parents lived in his current apartment. When Dejan’s wife became pregnant, they switched flats.

In his spare time, he plays touch rugby and works out when he’s not coding R, hanging out with his friends, or attending concerts. “They stretch and relieve the spine after running or going to the gym,” Dejan says while showing off a pair of gravity boots. They work by hanging upside down from a pole in his hallway, which he willingly demonstrates. He got them off eBay “because the price was better than the originals.” He maneuvers down. Dejan tries not to spend too much time inside.

He checks the time and realizes he has a hairdresser appointment. As he meanders through the walkway between the blocks to the salon, he arrives five minutes later.

While getting his already short hair trimmed, he and the hairdresser reminisce about old Belgrade times, primarily related to the NATO bombing in 1999. “The bombing wasn’t a good thing. People were really suffering in other parts of the city,” Dejan says, cloaked in a purple barber cape. “That’s true,” the hairdresser responds, “but we had the best time here. Everything was cheap, there was always a party somewhere.”

Dejan hesitantly admits that some aspects of life seemed more carefree. “When you are bombed, you’ll never know when the bomb will fall, so there was some kind of coping mechanism,” he explains. The parties allowed them not to think about the stress and anxiety inflicted on so many people. “We were drunk all the time because the beer was very cheap–everything was cheap. I was a student at that time, I didn’t work. Nobody went to work.”

“During the bombing, we were all against the regime, and it was already a very closed country. We were under sanctions, sanctions I never saw the point in. They didn’t hurt rich people, only poor people. We couldn’t do or say anything, and we eventually got bombed even though we didn’t want to be bombed.” The clipper buzzes over his scalp.

Back in his apartment, Dejan lights another cigarette on his enclosed balcony. “My life was simple, you know, I didn’t do anything extreme,” he says. “I have many good memories from this area. Hanging out with friends, doing nothing specific. We didn’t have money to go to the city, so we’d have our own little get-togethers in the neighborhood.”

They played chess and Preference, went to neighborhood football matches, and shared laughs. Today, he’s an agronomist working with medicinal plants, yet few plants are on display in his apartment. “I don’t work here. Plants are my job,” Dejan laughs.

He lives with his 11-year-old daughter, 19-year-old son, and wife. His wife grew up in Blok 19A, just across the street, which may appear more homely with its pitched roofs, beige walls, and red, almost wood-like framework. Both areas form a cohesive community, albeit 19A is a stark contrast to the block-like, brutalist fortress on the other side of the Milentija Popovića street, where you can see the rebar through the weathered concrete on the façade of the buildings.

“I like the architectural style a lot, and we are proud of it,” he says about his current neighborhood. “It was designed to provide everything people needed here. We didn’t want to go elsewhere because we had everything in this blok,” he says, “but a lot has changed.” Dejan takes a sigh and looks wistfully at the basketball court.

Despite being renowned for its carefully crafted layout and profound historical significance, Blok 23 is far from its apex unless improvements are made. “We’re living in a garbage can.” He surveys the landscape from the enclosed balcony. “Everything is cleaner than this neighborhood. It’s very, very dirty.”

Blok 23 has seen its fair share of decline, and as Dejan points out, “The area is protected by the government, but nobody cares about that.”

Amongst the things he dislikes is the removal of several distinctive concrete structures and the replacement of the old playground with a new one that is incongruous with its surroundings – surroundings with historical integrity and a cultural value representing a critical time in Yugoslavia’s road to mass housing.

“We are a marvel of brutalism. We should decide what should be done in our neighborhood.”

Prints from Life in the New

View the price list for prints from my ‘Life in the New’ book project here.