Why is it
that BORDERS and NATIONALITY, and not FREEDOM, shape the IDENTITY of most of
the people on this planet? Today’s national borders have been in constant flux through
history and come from a desire to take other people's land and through blood
and tears. Everyone is born somewhere. It's not something you deserved, made or
gained. How is it then that the pure coincidence of being born in one country
leads all too often to a situation where you're ready to kill someone just
because that person doesn't belong to your tribe, nation, country or religion.
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I was born
in BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA and as a 9 year old girl I was forced to leave it as
a REFUGEE. My childhood somehow protected me from fully understanding
what the horrors of war are. War
was for me then the game of adults, a game no one could explain to me in a way
I could understand. I was taught to live in the present, to look forward
to the future, and to let the past stay in the past. I generally feel free from
some borders that people, wars, and history have shaped. Rootless would be the
closest picture of my concept of national identity and if any place defines me
as a person it would be planet Earth, not any particular country. In the
meantime, I moved to Berlin and it happens so often that in mixed international
groups people ask you: Where are you from? Sometimes you need to move away to
see the whole picture, to see that we are never free from our past and
countries we come from. I found out that part of me is still that 9 year old
Bosnian refugee girl, a girl that now wants to tell her story.
The WAR in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that heart-shaped country
in the middle of Europe, finished 20 years ago. And it’s not just marks of the
war that you can see everywhere, like holes in the walls, it’s about the war
that is still happening in the heads of the people. Towns are still divided and
people are divided with their national identities. The hate and the un-forgiveness
are still very much alive and are disabling the country to develop and people
to live a normal life again.
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I want that
to CHANGE. My only weapon is my CAMERA. I came back to Bosnia and Herzegovina
as a photographer, traveled through it from my hometown Bugojno to capital
Sarajevo, from divided town Mostar to a place of the biggest massacre in that
war - Srebrenica. I was shooting THE LIVING and THE DEAD Bosnia and
Herzegovina, making portraits of PEOPLE in streets and on markets, and visiting
CEMETERIES. And exactly there, on Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and
Partisan cemeteries I felt that I finally came home and found pieces of my
country. Those places don’t call for new hate, revenge or more killing. Death
makes everything even. If we can be the same in front of death, why can’t we be
brothers and sisters while we’re still alive?
Now, the time has come to show it to the world. I’ve decided to travel with this photo project from my newly adopted town of BERLIN, all the way through the BALKAN region and end up in ISTANBUL. The history of Berlin and Istanbul are marked by conflicts and divisions, but also by the demolition of walls and fostering of acceptance. Countries of the former Yugoslavia are still on their way to unfolding those nodes in themselves. This project will last from the end of April to the beginning of August 2015. The exhibition will try to start a dialog about identities, traces of both personal and global HISTORY, MEMORY and OBLIVION, FORGIVENESS and the lack of it. On my way I will also try to document other people's stories on these themes and show them afterwards.
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I have
already found spaces to show my work in Berlin (Café & gallery Pappelreiche),
Frankfurt Oder (as a part of the festival Art and der Grenze), Prague
(Café & gallery Lajka), Rijeka
(Erste club Gallery), Split (No name
Gallery), Koprivnica (AK
Gallery), Tuzla (Peace Flame House Tuzla), Novi Sad (Café & gallery Frida),
Skopje (Kooperacija, Mobile /
Montage Gallery), Sofia (The Fridge) and Istanbul (looking for the space).
This is
where you, my lovely audience, come in. I have prepared some nice GIFTS for you
– postcards, original prints and shoots. If you donate just 5 euro, this
enables me to buy a new roll of film for my analog cameras and every new film
brings 24 or 36 new possibilities. So this money
makes a real DIFFERENCE and I am utterly GRATEFUL for every piece of SUPPORT.
The money collected in this campaign will be used to cover travel costs,
accommodation, printing of photos and new films.
I believe
that ART can have the POWER to make a CHANGE in the world and I’m ready to do
it. Become a part of my project, help me break some borders in people's heads
and spread a little more COMPASSION and TOLERANCE.
The BUDGET of the campaign is as follows:
Travel
costs for bus/train/carpooling – 1300 Euro
Costs of
accommodation (where it is not possible to use someone’s hospitality)– 600 Euro
Costs of
food and refreshments (not to be a starving artist :)) - 400 Euro
Costs of
residency in Istanbul – 500 Euro
Prints and
promotional materials for the project – 300 Euro
Film rolls
and other equipment – 200 Euro
Costs of
perks (printing and postal costs) – it's up to you, but let's say 200 Euro
Total costs
would therefore sum up to around 3.500 Euro, and I would be more than happy to
collect 2.000 of it from this campaign. The rest will hopefully come from some
other ways of Universe speaking.
THANKS to:
Tanja
Minarik - video
Topola – music used in video
Foto studio Centar, Zagreb - prints
STEP Beyond Travel grant - European Cultural Foundation
Queer Zagreb
WEB:
www.wherethelightwillfall.com
E-MAIL:
wherethelightwillfall@gmail.com