Historia Interrupta

July 22 –

Arrived in Budapest on July 15th, and spent the first few days dedicated to bodily needs and pleasures: got a pass at a local gym, rented bikes to get around and get to know the city on the ground, and explored 2 of the fabled bathing facilities – the Palatinus and the baroque pleasure garden of the Szecheny. Immediately we realized that our eyes would be in for a treat with block after block of spectacular architecture of the XIX century, from the over the top bourgeois Neo-Baroque to the more avant-garde fin-de-siecle art nouveau and early modernism. A big part of the city has been now immaculately restored, and we got neck cramps from looking up at so many ornate cupolas, capitals, friezes, mosaics, and turreted roofs. Still, there are also areas that look no different than they did before the collapse of communism 1989, and it is in those gray stone facades that one can imagine more clearly the dour existence that emerged in this city after WWII.
Only then, after 3 days, and after our dear friend Neon joined us here, did we explore some of the sites with more historical significance. At the National Gallery, housed in a wing of the impressive, rambling former Royal Palace on Buda Hill, we were intrigued by a collection of Late-Gothic altar pieces from churches all around Hungary – all done in a peculiar style combining polychrome wood carvings and paintings. One particular scene of the Massacre of the Newborn was horrifically graphic and would find an echo hours later when we visited the House of Terror, a museum dedicated to the rememberance of the horrors of life under the rule of Fascism and Communism. The museum itself is overproduced and incoherent, with poor presentation of the context of its exhibits, aiming more at effect than at historical information, but a visit to the underground prison cells, and many of the recollections of now ageing victims of those regimes were chilling. More than anything we felt enormous sadness to see how a prosperous and vibrant city, at the heart of the cultural and scientific heart of Europe was not only physically destroyed, but also robbed of its soul by decades of war and brutal repression.
Late afternoon we drove to the Statue Park, a kind of open air museum-graveyard for all the monumental sculptures that were taken out of the city after the fall of communism. It was ironic to see such grandiose statues demoted to signify a footnote in history – albeit a very painful one. In a little exhibit area at the park, we watched a screening of a mesmerizing film made with archival footage from educational films created by the communist secret police to train spies and informers. The fascinating – and frightening - thing about these clips is that all the scenes in them are recreated by police officers who enact the “performance” of their under-cover activities. It would have been funny in a Maxwell Smart kind of way if we didn’t know that these people were actually committed to erasing even the smallest trace of dissent from their society. The level of perversity in devising how to spy on people, how to break into their homes, how to use informers, and above all, how to maintain a constant atmosphere of fear and paranoia was simply horrifying and it made us understand more completely what the people in this country have had to survive and how it must have affected their collective psyche.

The In Between City

July 12, 13

We were not quite sure what to expect from Belgrade (pop. 1.6 million) before we arrived, we only knew that it was bombed by the US and NATO forces in 1999 for its aggression towards Kosovo and as a result, Americans are not exactly welcomed warmly.

Belgrade seems to lack a clear identity of its own and is trying to figure out who it is after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the end of Communism and the collapse of the socialist state --as well as  the trauma left by the last Balkan wars.  It is still quite isolated from the rest of Europe as all Serbs need to apply for visas to travel anywhere, even to go to Italy or Greece which are so close by.

The city is very much in between the past and future, east and west.It seems to be on pause at the moment, but unfortunately, most of the people we have spoken to do not seem to have a lot of hope for its future. A curator we met today at the Museum for Contemporary Art, which has been closed for renovations for the past 2 years, told us that in Belgrade “we cannot expect anything”—because the level of corruption is so high and most of the politicians do not see the value in supporting contemporary art, only sporting events and pop concerts.  According to our architect friend Ivan Kucina, the city lacks any real culture of its own, apart from the “the culture of greed,” referring to the monopolies and organized mafia groups controlling how business is done, often thoughtlessly and hastily without any real concern for the development of an economic/social infrastructure.

For a city that has been continuously inhabited since before Roman times, it is surprising to us that there is so little evidence of these various civilizations in the existing architecture that is left standing—each time the city was occupied the existing architecture and its monuments were demolished and built again. Apart from a core of turn-of-the century grand, neoclassical buildings, the city consists mostly of drab modernist developments from the 50’s and 60’s, a time when the city experienced its most rapid growth under Tito. The few modernist icons still standing (often in ruins) are now being retrofitted to suit the needs of the new neo-liberal entrepreneurs.

The best thing about being here for us has been the opportunity to spend time with Ivan and his partner Barbara (THANKS FOR THE GREAT DINNER), as well as with Biljana Djurdjevic, a hugely talented artist who paints powerful figurative canvases packed with psychological depth and unfliching human suffering.

See http://www.biljanadjurdjevic.com/

Thank you Biljana for our memorable lunch on the river in Zemun, perhaps the most charming part of Belgrade by far. 

 

 

 

Border crossings

July 11^th

Drove from Sarajevo to Belgrade, through the mountains of northern Bosnia, and passing by many villages, each populated by a different ethnic-religious community, which could be identified by the prominent minarets or bell-towers or steeples, as well as cemeteries.

The trip took longer than planned – we were on a narrow 2 lane road and there were 2 accidents which stopped traffic completely, at one point for almost 45 minutes. Then we got stuck behind two huge trucks trudging through the steep inclines and curves. Finally we got to the Croatian border and to the freeway, only to be detained for 3 hours waiting to get through the Serbian border ( So many borders in the Balkans!!).

As is turns out we were engulfed by a mass exodus of Turkish families from Western Europe, who were driving in caravans from Germany, Switzerland, France, and Belgium, with whole families packed in vans for their annual summer vacation in their ancestral villages in Turkey. They drive for several days straight on – passing through Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria before arriving in Turkey. It was fascinating to be caught in the middle of this huge ethnic mobilization that happens every year – at first we were frustrated, even irritated, to have to wait in such line to pass through the border, but then we realized that we were actually witnessing a cultural phenomenon which could be even romantically tied to tales of ancient caravans or migrations, even though we knew these were simply people taking their annual holiday.

We finally arrived in Belgrade after sunset to find ourselves driving in a city where all the street signs are in Cyrillic!! Somehow we managed to safely arrive in our hotel and settle in for the night.

Memorials in Sarajevo

July 9^th=- 10^th

Visited today the “Tunnel Museum”, a small memorial to the only connection between the besieged Sarajevo and the outside world. The secret tunnel ran from the basement of one house to another for 800 yards, passing beneath the airport runway – which was controlled by the UN – and allowing for the transport of fuel, food, medicines, and arms to defend the city. It was also a way to get some of the seriously wounded and ill to get better treatment. Today this small private museum is run by the family that owns the house on the “safe” side and it is their continued mission to bring awareness to visitors by allowing them into their home and learning about the tunnel and its use. Because of a new airport runway, only about 20 yards of the tunnel can be visited today, but it is enough to give one an impression of what it was like to go through it during such a time of crisis.

Earlier that day we heard that there was a march passing through Sarajevo of about 2500 people, mostly women, who were going by foot to Srebrenica, on the eve of the commemoration of a horrible massacre in July of 1995. These cold-blooded killings were the only ones to be recognized as Genocide by the Hague Tribunal, even though many other slaughters like these happened in Bosnia during the war There was little information about this event, so we could not find the marchers, whom we wanted to join at least for part of their journey and pay our respects.

July 11 was declared a Memorial Day all over Europe, and the day before a solemn mood took over Sarajevo, with the television only playing classical music or showing some programs related to the massacre. We watched one quite disturbing film, probably made by English or American TV, which covered in great detail and with many interviews and graphic images of women and children fleeing or being chased out of the NATO base that was supposed to protect them. There were also harrowing images of Bosniak soldiers arriving to safe places after escaping through the forests the brutal shelling of the Serbs.

Being here for this commemoration added another  layer of emotional complexity to our visit to this city and its tragic history.

Some People

July 8^th

Today we visited the old Jewish cemetery on the edge of the city, a deeply moving experience –seeing the Hebrew script etched into a thousand mostly modest stones that bear the marks of time with graves dating back to the 16^th century and continuing right up to the middle of the 20^th century which is a testament to how integrated this community was here in Sarajevo. The cemetery is a jumble of weeds, broken paths and fallen monuments, but not due to the desecration that can be found in many other jewish cemeteries in Europe. Instead, we learned that it was on the front line of fighting between Bosniaks and Serbs in the last war and many soldiers were killed on the spot while others used the gravestones for protection. It was the jewish dead who helped to save their old city.

We drove next to the opposite side of the city to an idyllic spot on a hill overlooking the entire valley. It was in this spot that Amir’s father spent 2 1/2 years in the trenches which are still visible  and which are surrounded by corpses of buildings still standing as horrific reminders of what happened there only 15 years ago. This spot used to be a forest but all the trees were cut down during the siege for fuel. Across the city sits another mountain that is off limits to visitors as it is still covered with thousands of land mines.

Globalization is just around the corner but it has not yet arrived here in Sarajevo, apart from the  Coca Cola signs, awnings and umbrellas to be found in every tavern and cafe. It is refreshing not to find the same old chain stores and global brands on every corner. Even though there are perhaps 20 kebab restaurants on each block, each one has its own unique characteristic with something special to offer and most everything is still family-owned. We want to believe that the people of this country will find the balance between developing their economy and keeping their rich culture intact.

Some History

July 7^th

We dedicate this day to visiting the many museums in the city, including the Jewish Museum, in the building of the old Sephardic Synagogue. Jews settled in Sarajevo after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and up until the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, flourished in the city under both Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian rule. The Nazis, in collaboration with the Ustasha, the right-wing Croatian paramilitary, rounded up and exterminated much of the Jewish population. Those who survived, were eventually air-lifted to Israel by the Israeli government during the siege in the 90’s. Our second stop was at the National Museum, which was gravely damaged during the last war and is now partially reopened. The main exhibits there are archaeological, showing the continuous inhabitation of this land by cultures from pre-historical times. In this museum, in a specially constructed vault, lays the Sarajevo Hagaddah, the oldest illuminated Jewish manuscript in existence in the world. The story of how the Hagaddah made it from Spain to Sarajevo, and then how it survived both the German occupation and the tragic shelling of the National Library of Bosnia during the siege is in itself fascinating. This story is told in a wonderful article that appeared in The New Yorker in 2007  http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2007-12-03#folio=074.

Our last visit of the day was to the Historical Museum, formerly the Museum of the Revolution, which now houses the harrowing permanent exhibit “Sarajevo Under Siege”.

This unflinching show presents documentary material about the daily life in the surrounded city (3.5 years!!), where the residents had to brave sniper fire every  time they left their homes, where all the supply lines of food and medicine were cut by the Serbian army, where people had to improvise everything in order to keep a semblance of normal life, and where the frontline was directly behind people’s homes in the hills. It was a sobering experience to see all the photos and objects in the exhibition, including home-made guns and stoves. It was also a testament to the human spirit in a time of great hardship and  we were ashamed  to acknowledge  that we knew and cared so little about the plight of this city and its people at the time these events where happening, consumed by our own dramas thousands of miles away in California.

Titos’s trophies…We also ran into a very peculiar exhibition of communist-era trophies that were displayed as sculptural objects and imbued with a mysterious kind of magical aura. Communist kitsch to be sure, but something very new for us to see as artifacts of Tito’s time in power. 

Arriving in Sarajevo

July 6^th

Left Mostar for  Sarajevo, where we arrived at the end of the day after many stops along the road.  After checking-into our hotel we took a reconnaissance walk through the Bascarsija, the old Ottoman part of the town and the adjacent more modern area with many Austro-Hungarian buildings. Immediately we are captivated by the energy and mix of the city, where peaceful co-existence of Christians, Muslims, and Jews was a reality  until World War II. Unlike Mostar, the city has come back to life from total destruction during the brutal siege of 1992-95, and Sarajevans wear proudly the badge of survival. The scars of war are less visible here but the memories are sharp and painful.

July 5^th

We started the day by having a long coffee (3 hours---which seems the norm here) with Amir and Marija, and then drove to shoot some video in an abandoned quarry, where the stones used for the rebuilding of the Mostar Bridge were taken from.

Then it was on to Blagaj, to visit an ancient Sufi monastery, a very sacred place for Musilms, by an enormous cave from where the river Buna flows. An interesting item we saw at this site was a copy of the proclamation made by the Ottoman Sultan in 1463 granting total religious freedom to the citizens of Bosnia. Muslims here are very proud of their tolerant tradition, and their version of Islam is quite liberal and completely removed from any fundamentalism. Later that afternoon, while taking another drive and shooting some more video by the lonely mountain roads, we realized, by noticing the many minarets protruding here and there in the landscape, that we were actually in a Muslim European country, something that many people have a very hard time envisioning, much less accepting as a possibility.

We finished the day by having dinner by the Neretva river, on the banks of the old Ottoman city, which looks amazingly just as it must have looked 500 years ago. It was built in a lush spot by a rushing river and its tributary waterfalls, creating a small labyrinth of caves, bridges, and secret gardens right out a miniature painting, or even like oriental landscapes depicted in many European renaissance religious paintings.

 

Normality Effect

The wounds are still raw and there is  enormous corruption everywhere but there is a sustained peace, even normality – or rather what we have come to call “a Normality Effect”: this is something we experienced as well in Tel Aviv, and even in our short visit to Ramallah. In all these places there is an elaborate veneer of normality, despite the awareness of all the tensions and threats that could turn normal life into hellish war overnight. In Mostar, there are physical reminders of brutality everywhere, so the juxtaposition of a normal life with the memories of the war attain a particular surreal level. One building, for example, is completely pockmarked and half destroyed by shells, yet two of its floors have been renovated and are inhabited, while the middle floor remains a wreck, its Serbian owners having fled the city, and who will probably return someday, when the property values have risen again, and then sell the place.

We encountered the immediacy and intensity of all the feelings that are alive in the region as soon as we arrived in Mostar and met up with  Amir  Galijasevic, the guide  recommended to us by the Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art.

Amir’s life story in itself would merit a whole chapter in this blog – how he was sent away from Sarajevo as a teenager to Germany during the war, how he became a refugee and then a student in Switzerland, and finally how he decided to come back to Bosnia and make a life for himself in his homeland.  Today he is a kind of jack-of-all-trades, working as a guide for foreign visitors, doing translations, and following his passion of producing Dub music and promoting live concerts. We hit it off right away and we knew that we would be in good hands in our stay here.

We took a brief walking tour of the city, with its charming Ottoman old town and the famous bridge that was brutally destroyed by Croatian forces during the war, and we learned that in fact Mostar is a divided town, with an invisible demarcation line between the Croatian Catholic side and the Bosnian Muslim side, and that very little is done in order to create more interaction between the two sides, who prefer to live side by side but ignoring each other as much as possible. Because of this division, the town has been without a Mayor for the past 8 months!

Amir took us to visit a cultural youth center, run by a group of enlightened creative people, including his friend Marija Kolobaric – a Croat who actually chooses to live in the Muslim side of town. This center is the only place where Croat and Bosniak youth can meet, and it is actually  the only place where movies can be seen in the city, since the only proper movie theater was destroyed in the war and has not been rebuilt yet.

Speaking with Marija we understood the particular quandary of artists and intellectuals in BiH, who are committed to the rebirth of their countries cultural institutions and heritage after the total collapse brought about by the war. They are doing this with very little support of the government or of foreign organizations, since culture is deemed irrelevant in the face of all the other problems that the country has to deal with. Both Marija and Amir complained of how the country is mired in apathy and cynicism, and part of that attitude can be blamed on a lack of cultural pride or the sense that it is possible to build a better society from the ashes of the war.

Later on we were taken to a posh terrace lounge, where a crowd of hipsters where enthusiastically rocking to a live band from Belgrade –S.A.R.S. who has  a song topping the charts in the region.. It was explained to us that this band was an example of a kind of Anarcho-Pop that was becoming quite popular, and at least in that sense it showed that there is room and a receptive audience for alternative culture.

Independence Day

July 4^th,

After spending a couple of days driving through Slovenia and Coatia and stopping to visit 2 of the most magical cities in Europe—Split and Dubrovnik, we finally crossed the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that is home to a multitude of conflicting and overlapping histories, traditions, religions and ethnicities; a true cross-roads if there ever was one. This region was at the center of the 1992-95 Balkan War with many  Bosnian towns and villages being pillaged and plundered by its neighbors, Serbia and Croatia, and thousands of innocent Bosnians were chased from their homes or killed on the spot. It was madness --medieval, brutal and unforgiving-- and there are many visible and not so visible scars to be found in the landscape and among the people we have met so far.

Being here on the 4^th of July seems momentous somehow since in the US we take Independence Day so much for granted. Only 15 years ago, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and the other Balkan republics were fighting fiercely for their right to exist as sovereign states after the break up of Yugoslavia. Because they have been occupied by so many foreign powers for so long –Venetian, Ottoman, Austrian, Hungarian, Italian, German, and the battle for power between them—these people cherish their freedom and are staunchly nationalistic Despite a common language and shared histories, religion keeps them apart. It is an utterly complex social-political situation  rooted in years of hatred and war. 

more pics from Biennale

Venice Biennale Part 2

Our second day visiting the Biennale proved to be far more rewarding, starting in the morning with the Bruce Nauman’s “off-site” exhibition, especially his new sound piece “Giorni” which despite its austere simplicity did make us reflect on the passage of time in a deeply affecting way. After a jagged scramble through the Venetian labyrinth and two vaporettos later, we made it just in the nick of time for Peter Greenaway’s multi-media extravaganzic interpretation of Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana” – part of his series of digital interactions with various masterpieces of Western art. His use of digital media was stunning and clever, but the result is not really an artwork, more of a didactic deconstruction of the painting as a reflection of Venetian aristocratic and religious values in the XVI century. Still, the audiovisual impact is so spectacular that we stayed and watched it a second time.

The afternoon was spent at the Arsenale, where we found several very compelling pieces. The overall concept of the “Making Worlds” exhibition is very weak with no convincing curatorial point of view, almost as if the artists where arbitrarily chosen and thrown together at the last minute. Still, this doesn’t take away the sheer pleasure of walking through the magnificent space of the Arsenale, where everything was impeccably installed. Highlights there included a video by Keren Cyter (whose work was also liked very much at the “Younger than Jesus” show at the New Museum in NY), a movie by Ulla Von Brandenburg which was beautifully shot inside Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye; a Paul Chan projection piece based on de Sade; and clever paper constructions by Carlos Garaicoa from Cuba.

The highest marks, however, go to “The Feast of Trimalchio” an over-the-top 9 channel video installation by the Russian collective AES+F presented in an adjacent group show organized by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. The piece makes reference to the famous feast of Roman decadence depicted in the Satyricon and updates it to the realities of today’s consumer culture via Russian extravagance, the hyper-real aesthetics of advertising in glossy fashion magazines, and 3-D animated landscapes. Mesmerizing and so vulgar we couldn’t stop watching because of its extraordinary production values and innate integrity as a cultural critique of our material desires.

 

Venice Biennale Part 1

Next day Venice where we got an overdose of (not always the best) contemporary art from all over the world. The most satisfying aspect of seeing art in this city is the architecture that houses it. Some of the weakest, laziest pieces look stunning when installed in a 17-century factory, monastery or palazzo. Highlights for us so far include the Chapman Brothers FUCKING HELL, a tour de force that is part of the Pinault Collection, (the young Swedish artist) Nathalie Djurberg’s claymation masterpiece called EXPERIMENT, and K. Wodiczko’s installation in the Polish Pavillion called GUESTS which addresses the alienation and invisibility felt by guest workers and illegal immigrants in the EU. Very powerful, poetic, disturbing works, all of them in their own distinct way. These 3 made the whole day (8 hours of looking) worthwhile. Tomorrow the Arsenale…