SARAJEVO INTERNATIONAL

SCCA Sarajevo 2001

With the participation of Ana Abdelbasit, Francis Bueb, Yvana Enzler, Nabil el Hassan, Paul Lowe, Krista Maresch, Marty McKeller, Chris Miller, Marco Noce, Paola Ossa, and Imad Ziyada.

Sarajevo International was a participatory and collaborative project which resulted in twelve video documents/stories created in together with twelve residents of Sarajevo, foreigners who had moved to Sarajevo for various personal reasons during the 1990s. Presented in Sarajevo through a series of site-specific video installations in public and semi-public places, the project wanted to create a counter narrative of the city at that particular moment in time, when everybody was keen to leave their place.

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At the beginning of the 1990s, the people of Sarajevo fled all over the world, and emigration continued after the war. In 2000 it was as if everyone was just about to leave for good. But was there anyone who had moved to Sarajevo during that time? This question was the starting point for my project. I wanted to change the perspective and create a narrative that would show Sarajevo in a different light, as a city in which people wanted to live. So I found people who moved in and made them talk, thinking that could encourage some people to stay.

The twelve project protagonists of Sarajevo International differed in their social status, religion and nationality and ranged from an Italian university professor to a Chinese shopkeeper but did not include people in well-paid jobs related to war and peace missions. The idea was to present economic, political and social backgrounds of that post-war society told through a targeted selection of foreigners living in the city and their personal stories. The main purpose of the project was twofold: to create a new, socially relevant narrative, a new view on the current situation in Bosnian society, and then place it and present it in a public space with art works carrying the same narrative. I felt that everyone was tired of the national conflicts and that turning the perspective around would result in an important breakthrough. The project’s message was simple: life is not only about Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. There are other people living here as well.

The public presentation of the stories of these foreigners who had come to stay meant moving the focus from the three warring ethnic groups to some other people who had moved to Sarajevo at a time when its own residents were abandoning it, believing the city had no future. This reversal of perspective was the most important conceptual moment of the project.

Encouraging mutual communication among the participants and helping with their integration into a wider social environment was another aims of the project, which we intended to put into practice by showing the video stories in various public places in the city and broadcasting them on local television. The choice of the public sites for presentation was made in collaboration with the participants and their wishes were included: two book-shops, a restaurant, the French Cultural Center, the Student Cultural Center, the airport, a video store were the sites of presentations.

With my help and instructions, each of the participants shaped his/her story him/herself. It took 50 days to make the videos. The different cultural backgrounds influenced the way the participants approached the creative process. Some of them did the video shooting themselves, wrote their stories or statements and dealt creatively with the video structure. For others, telling the story directly to the camera was the only possible way of expression and this resulted in the videos having varying narrative styles.

The public presentation took place throughout May 2001 on 12 locations in the city, after which screening were organized at Obala Meeting Point and Student Center Access. Here is the list of the video works from the project:

001. “Friends”, 14’55’’, a video by Imad Ziyada and Kristina Leko
002. “Bosnian-Austrian Friendship”, 9’40’’, a video by Krista Maresch and K.L.
003. “Photographer”, 11’15’’, a video by Paul Lowe and K.L.
004. “Shame”, 9’35’’, a video by Marco Noce and K.L.
005. “The Car”, 9’50’’, a video by Ana Abdelbasit and K.L.
006. “A Social Sculpture”, 14’50’’, a video by Francis Bueb and K.L.
007. “I don’t remember his name”, 7’10’’, a video by K.L.
008. “A Place from the Future”, 9’15’’, a video by Paola Ossa and K.L.
009. “Pride”, 4’50’’, a video by Nabil el Hassan and K.L.
010. “The Pyramid”, 7’45’’, a video by Chris Miller and K.L. 011. “Identity/Identities”, 9’10’’, a video by Yvana Enzler and K.L.
012. “A Day with Marty”, 14’35’’, a video by Marty McKeller and K.L.

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Video Synopses

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Yvana Enzler, born in Switzerland in 1952, a diplomat, came to Sarajevo in 1998, and not by chance. The video follows the matrilineal line of Yvana’s family tree, revealing her complex identity. The story is about three of Yvana’s female ancestors, about her great-great-grandmother born in a Jewish Sarajevo family in the early 19th century, her great-grandmother, a Catholic from Vienna who married and went to live in Belgrade, and finally her grandmother, who was Serbian Orthodox, born in Belgrade and buried in Switzerland. Yvana’s complex identity becomes a metaphor for the identity of Sarajevo. In the video, photos from her family album alternate with scenes of Sarajevo relating to the three different religions. Marco Noce, born in Italy in 1963, a poet, came to Sarajevo in 1998 to teach Italian literature and language at the Sarajevo University. In 2001, alongside his lecturing job at the university, he also volunteered at the Italian Embassy and the Sarajevo-Italian Association, and taught two Italian language courses. He founded an NGO for cultural exchange between Italy and Bosnia and Herzegovina. His video story starts with a sonnet by Francesco Petrarch, by way of an introduction to the reasons for Noce’s coming to Sarajevo. Through Petrarch’s sonnet and his personal experience, Marco talks about the feelings of guilt and shame that arose in connection with the war in Sarajevo, and the feeling of uneasiness shared with those who listen to stories about the war that they have been lucky enough not to have personally experienced. Marco conveys his thoughts on Sarajevo and on interpersonal and international solidarity through combining two performances done for the video. One performance is a carefully structured public lecture on Petrarch’s sonnet in which he explains that when preoccupied by personal passions people tend to forget others and indeed humanity. In the second part of the video, Marco reads the transcript of a chat he had with his wife living in Italy, and who, like Petrarch’s love, is called Laura, on the theme of Sarajevo and the feelings of guilt and shame he experienced. Krista Maresch, born in Austria in 1968, a teacher of German, met a group of young people from Sarajevo in Vienna, moving to Sarajevo three years later as the wife of one of them. Krista’s video symbolically combines home-video recordings and speaks of the existence of a dual perspective: one is that of “Bosnia in Vienna”, of young people who came there as war refugees tormented by nostalgia; the other being “Sarajevo in the post-war period”, of misunderstandings between those who emigrated during the war and those who had stayed in Sarajevo. The video speaks of the differences in mentality and about the efforts to bridge these differences. Krista decided to show her video at Sarajevo International Airport. During May 2001 her video was part of the closed circuit television program at Sarajevo Airport and was broadcast every hour, along with the standard selection of current news. Imad Ziyada, a Palestinian born in Baghdad in 1966, is a civil engineer who today runs his own graphic design studio in Sarajevo, where he has lived since 1996. Imad did not come to Sarajevo in the way one would expect, through the strong Arabic lobby in Sarajevo, but thanks to his friend, Vjekoslav Saja, a Catholic who he met in Baghdad in the 1980s. Imad does not have a passport, only a temporary travel document and is actually an Iraqi refugee. After the embargo in Iraq in 1990, he was unemployed and without any prospects. In his video Imad tells his life story chronologically, which gradually turns into a story of friendship and how it is possible to make your dreams come true. Imad sends regular financial support to his parents and brothers in Baghdad. His video was shown in the British Council Library in Sarajevo, as he had met his best friend Vjeko at an English language course at the British Council in Baghdad.

Marco Noce, born in Italy in 1963, a poet, came to Sarajevo in 1998 to teach Italian literature and language at the Sarajevo University. In 2001, alongside his lecturing job at the university, he also volunteered at the Italian Embassy and the Sarajevo-Italian Association, and taught two Italian language courses. He founded an NGO for cultural exchange between Italy and Bosnia and Herzegovina. His video story starts with a sonnet by Francesco Petrarch, by way of an introduction to the reasons for Noce’s coming to Sarajevo. Through Petrarch’s sonnet and his personal experience, Marco talks about the feelings of guilt and shame that arose in connection with the war in Sarajevo, and the feeling of uneasiness shared with those who listen to stories about the war that they have been lucky enough not to have personally experienced. Marco conveys his thoughts on Sarajevo and on interpersonal and international solidarity through combining two performances done for the video. One performance is a carefully structured public lecture on Petrarch’s sonnet in which he explains that when preoccupied by personal passions people tend to forget others and indeed humanity. In the second part of the video, Marco reads the transcript of a chat he had with his wife living in Italy, and who, like Petrarch’s love, is called Laura, on the theme of Sarajevo and the feelings of guilt and shame he experienced.

Krista Maresch, born in Austria in 1968, a teacher of German, met a group of young people from Sarajevo in Vienna, moving to Sarajevo three years later as the wife of one of them. Krista’s video symbolically combines home-video recordings and speaks of the existence of a dual perspective: one is that of “Bosnia in Vienna”, of young people who came there as war refugees tormented by nostalgia; the other being “Sarajevo in the post-war period”, of misunderstandings between those who emigrated during the war and those who had stayed in Sarajevo. The video speaks of the differences in mentality and about the efforts to bridge these differences. Krista decided to show her video at Sarajevo International Airport. During May 2001 her video was part of the closed circuit television program at Sarajevo Airport and was broadcast every hour, along with the standard selection of current news.

Imad Ziyada, a Palestinian born in Baghdad in 1966, is a civil engineer who today runs his own graphic design studio in Sarajevo, where he has lived since 1996. Imad did not come to Sarajevo in the way one would expect, through the strong Arabic lobby in Sarajevo, but thanks to his friend, Vjekoslav Saja, a Catholic who he met in Baghdad in the 1980s. Imad does not have a passport, only a temporary travel document and is actually an Iraqi refugee. After the embargo in Iraq in 1990, he was unemployed and without any prospects. In his video Imad tells his life story chronologically, which gradually turns into a story of friendship and how it is possible to make your dreams come true. Imad sends regular financial support to his parents and brothers in Baghdad. His video was shown in the British Council Library in Sarajevo, as he had met his best friend Vjeko at an English language course at the British Council in Baghdad.

SI @ SCCA Sarajevo, SCCA Sarajevo, Pro.ba

CREDITS
TheSarajevo International project was commissioned by the SCCA Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art and produced by Pro.ba.
Curator: Lejla Hodžić.
Curatorial assistant: Naida Begeta Supervisor: Dunja Blažević.
Video production: pro.ba, Amra Bakšić Čamo, Ajdin Bašić.
Graphics: Šejla Kamerić Project participants: Yvana Enzler (Switzerland), Ana Abdelbasit (Sudan/Croatia), Imad Ziyada (Palestine/Iraq), Marco Noce (Italy), Nabil el Hassan (Syria), Chris Miller (USA), Krista Maresch (Austria), Paola Ossa (Chile), Francis Bueb (France), Marty McKeller (Scotland), Paul Lowe (England), and an anonymous merchant from China.
Cooperation partners: British Council Sarajevo, The French Cultural Centre Sarajevo, Obala Meeting Point Sarajevo, Student Center Access Sarajevo, Sarajevo International Airport, Photo credits: Lejla Hodžić, Kristina Leko, project participants for video stills.

GENRE&FORMATS
Project: public art project; oral history; participatory-documentary video project; project with specific social groups; social plastic. Artwork/s and artifacts: a series of 12 video works; a series of interventions in semi-public space. Timeframe: process: 6 months. Number and profile of participants: 12; university students; persons with migrant background of different age and diverse profiles.