Chapter 8 assesses the remarkable musical achievements of Opus 4 – the composers Milimir Drašković, Miodrag Lazarov Pashu, Miroslav Savić, and Vladimir Tošić – and their peers as champions of minimalism, conceptual art, performance art, and Fluxus. This analytic-stylistic commentary, with score excerpts and compelling photographs, illustrates the influence that US minimalists and experimentalists, especially Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and John Cage, had on these young composers. The chapter examines Miloš Raičković’s approach to minimalism and the development of his “new classicism,” the conceptual approach in Drašković’s music, Lazarov Pashu’s ideosemas and action-composition, Savić’s theatrical “body art,” and Tošić’s reductionist control of limited pitch and rhythmic materials. This chapter examines the Yugoslav “neo-avant-garde” scene that developed at the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade, with appropriate emphasis on Fluxus as a link between Western and Eastern blocs.

In an act of reconciliation following the tumultuous student protests of 1968, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia gifted the students a building in the center of Belgrade – a student-managed “safe space” where they could freely express their views and creativity. The space, which officially opened in 1971, became the iconic Student Cultural Center (Studentski kulturni centar, SKC). It was the birthplace of the New Art Practice in Yugoslavia headed by groundbreaking artists Marina Abramović and the “Belgrade Six,” and a young group of rebellious composers and performers – Opus 4 and the Ensemble for Different New Music – who defined a new era of avant-garde art with performance and conceptual art, minimalism, Cage-style experimentalism, Fluxus, and the use of multimedia. Informed by archival documents, Chapter 7 charts the compelling history of the SKC and how artistic and music programming by young, daring artists contributed to its meteoric rise and international popularity.