In Memoriam - Prof. Elezović

Abstract

Slobodan Elezović – communicator, computer scientist, theoretician and historian of journalism, anthropologist and cultural publicist died in Zagreb on October 14, 2020 at 80 years of age. He will be remembered in Croatian science, academia and culture for his interdisciplinary engagement and prolific creative productivity. Science and art are in an inherent dichotomy with each other because the former is objective, verifiable, and reproducible; and art, on the other hand, is subjective and, in the same artefact, original and unrepeatable. In addition, modern science, due to its complexity and multitude of data, requires a narrow subject orientation, which leaves us with only the memory of polyhistors and omnipotent creative Renaissance figures. But, despite this fact, people of intellectual potential and artistic sensibility who can be interdisciplinary, creative and productive can still exist and survive logically in modern dimensions and limitations. One of them is prof. dr. sc. Slobodan Elezović, professor of communication and information sciences, communicator, theoretician and historian of journalism; a historian of the performing arts, especially drama, opera and ballet, as well as an art critic. Slobodan Elezović attended primary school and grammar school in Zagreb, and completed his studies in comparative literature and art history at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. He defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Communicological aspects in diplomatic activity with reference to the factors affecting the formation of public opinion” in 1993 at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics in Varaždin. He was a full professor at the Journalism Study of the Faculty of Political Science, undergraduate lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Graphic Arts, University of Zagreb, and doctoral studies at the Faculty of Political Science, Faculty of Organization and Informatics and Alma Mater Europaea University in Maribor / Salzburg. He published numerous professional and scientific articles in the journals Politička misao, Informatologia, Media, Culture and Public Relations, Collegium Antropologicum and others, as well as in peer-reviewed proceedings. He is also the author of monographs on communication-information and stage-artistic themes: “Biserka Cvejić”, “Historical development of communication: types and forms through the centuries”, “Philosopher of the stage or poetic-stage lyricist Milko Šparemblek”, “Vlasta Knezović: Life on Stage – 35th Anniversary of Artistic Work”, “Anthropology and Communication”, “Libretto – the Weft of Opera”, “Mira Stupica and Artistic Zagreb”, “Vertical of Life for Life on Stage, Ilir Kerni – National Ballet Champion of the Croatian National Theater Zagreb”. He was a member of the Croatian Political Science Association, member of the Presidency of the Croatian Communication Society, and member of the Croatian Anthropological Society and the European Anthropological Society, as well as a member of the editorial board of the Collegium Antropologicum, Informatologia and Media, Culture and Public Relations. In the academic year 2004/5 he founded and taught the course Communication in the Program of Anthropology Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, Coll. Antropol. 45 (2021) 4, Zagreb, Croatia 382 and since the autumn of 2005 professionally joined the scientific research work and scientific projects of the Institute of Anthropology in Zagreb. In academic year 2006/07 he implemented the course Visual Communication in the curriculum of Anthropology, Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, and in the fall of 2006 he published the manual “Anthropology and Communication” adding in January 2007 a conceptually-thematically related special print “Classical methodology of cultural anthropology, a review of the basics in the system”. In the Library and Reading Room Bogdan Ogrizović in Zagreb, he was the organizer and moderator of the Tribune for Culture and Science Collegium Hergešić, and the founder and main author of the portal “EHO in us and around us” cultural and social editorial concepts and content. He was the founder and long-term president of the “Croatian-Japanese Friendship Society”. We will remember all he did for the development of anthropology in Croatia, while his journalistic and scientific work will remain a permanent Croatian cultural and media legacy. We are grateful to him for his kind and noble friendship and for many shared moments illuminated by his pure flame of intellectual and moral conscience. Mate Mihanović