The fields of research and the kind of anthropology I write is strongly connected to how, when and where I was brought up. The importance of the state frameworks have been always present in mz life and it was important for me and my own futures came into being. I was born in the capital city called Belgrade in Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. My grandmother was a social workers and devoted her whole life to helping women through Yugoslav branch of Red Cross. My grandfather, her husband, was a captain in the Yugoslav army. My other grandmother is from Primosten, Croatia, and migrated from poverty to Belgrade when she was young. I am one of the last Yugoslav generations born in Yugoslavia and the first one who (unfortunately) was not Tito’s pioneer.
After the 1990s, Yugoslavia fell apart and I continued to live in Serbia. As a daughter of a famous rock’n’roll musician, I spent my childhood in various music studios and in the backstage of rock’n’roll concerts. Born into a rock’n’roll family which was always taking up an activist and anti-war side, questioning of authority has always been part of my life. My passion for exploration of how the futures come into being and how they are contested was especially formed while living under economic sanctions and different kinds of violent conflicts. This experience has brought me to understand the ways in which risk and the notion of futures were constantly shifted and how they become specific constitutive parts of the everyday life. The love for the infrastructures and pipes were formed by my experience of childhood living in warm flats with district heating, that were allocated to the workers at that time. My subsequent experience of living in cold houses in Manchester made me realize that what I considered to be “care” (hence, provided by district heating) was in other places subject to market economies (and better pays). I learnt about cultural differential ways in which infrastructures are felt. Finally, I learnt the value of making completely familiar things unknown thanks to my grandmother Maja (the Red Cross activist) who used to take me on rides by tram No. 2, a circular line that circled the town’s city center. Maja would pack a sandwich, water and candies, and we would enjoy the same ride all over again. In these rides, by making the same journey every week we would see the same routes through different perspectives which has sharpened my ethnographic curiosity and my sense. The circular line, the abundant state and that Belgrade unfortunately do not exist anymore.