Numerous first-aid guides about the process of facing the past agree on the first step, without which the process itself is meaningless: exercising self-understanding. Irrespective of the fact whether the purpose of the process of facing the past is to make future plans (as the last step of facing the past) or the purpose of entering such a process is to understand the actions, situations and developments that led to the current state or to learn about emotional intelligence, people face the same temptation: how to remain consistent and apply certain changes following their self-understanding.

The second step recommended by self-aid guides about the process of facing the past is closely related to the first one and reads as follows: exercising full mindfulness. This is a pre-requisite for forming thoughts about actions, situations and developments that caused emotions. Without recognising situations and circumstances faced by persons in a specific moment and place, there is no way one can start talking about (self-)understanding that can help a person learn the truth about themselves, be able to articulate their thoughts to others and create new value. This is also needed in facing the past, but also facing the present or future.

In order for someone to successfully understand themselves and articulate what was happening in the recent or distant past, the most important thing is to establish whether the reality defined by the past is still applicable, whether its consequences matter for the ”now and here”, and whether the ”triggers” of thoughts and emotions related to actions, situations and developments are repeated in a pseudo cyclical manner and in the dramaturgy of the predominantly used space. It is important to determine whether the messages, meanings and information are repeated in the wider time frame (transmission) and space (communication), whether the perception of messages, meanings and information is related to a certain action, situation or development from the past and whether the person is – ideally – no longer persecuted by the growing need for dependency on the past they keep in themselves. In short, it is important to establish whether a person’s need to keep silent about what happened is manipulated by the so-called willingness to ”leave the past behind”, while such past is reappearing in a new form – as a pseudo cyclical reality.

Has Marija Bajo, a pianist from Nova Bila, who is currently living and working in Zagreb, seized such an opportunity? At the beginning of September, Bajo performed a monodrama entitled Defying Darkness in Travnik. In this piece, she warns about the (lack of) culture of remembrance, remembrance policy and oblivion as well as the phenomenon of keeping silent about the past. While exercising self-understanding on the stage, Bajo leads us in a sober adventure of facing her own impressions from the war period she spent in her family home and abroad as a refugee. She shows that she is able to control the self-compassion while telling about the past in a manner that is understandable for the wider community and extending a hand for cooperation to those that have not had a chance to be part of a theatre or cultural centre stage audience and face actions, situations or developments, which marked the past and must be faced. She demonstrates the ability to control the present and seize the opportunity to understand the truth about herself, to articulate her opinion, and, most notably, to create new value.

Projects such as this one do not cannot be accomplished overnight. They are not a whim, ratio or a simple documentation. This project is the result of blindness and mere being in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Everyone is welcome, but in particular those that generalise and state that citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are witty people, those that believe that there are three truths or similar, well-known platitudes. I also welcome those that were so lucky that none of their family members were killed, died, were wounded during the war and/or killed because of their name and last name, because they are the ones that mostly need a culture of remembrance in order not to stumble around in the dark and someone else’s narrative. Although politics and education in Bosnia and Herzegovina have failed, I refuse to give up and let go. We have to try to find ways to face the past and rise above the post-war fog. Besides, how else is it possible to achieve a catharsis? – said Marija Bajo while announcing her monodrama. 

Bajo is not surprised by those that are still not able to openly share their impressions of the past. She understands that those are impressions about persons, time and space. However, she also knows that it is a spectacle that has taken over the newspeak about the past as ”water under the bridge” that will never come back, and that such a spectacle of facing the past has lost its purpose, allowing the past to be repeated and come back in the form of information, messages and meanings in time and space. The topics it focuses on are therefore unmarked sites of suffering, where people were killed or imprisoned, 140 of those, mapped in the framework of the project ”Marking Unmarked Sites of Suffering”, which was implemented by persons gathered around the Non-Violent Action Centre (Sarajevo/Belgrade).

In the monodrama entitled Defying Darkness, the pianist Marija Bajo is trying to interrupt the silence of the wider community in the process of ”facing” the past by staying quiet and forgetting. She wishes to admonish the audience that numerous unmarked sites of suffering are in the immediate vicinity and that they may tell stories about people that were tortured and killed in the previous war. She also wishes to share her experiences from the war period and put them into the context in which the well-known graffiti occur, warning about the reaction of the world to the genocide committed in Srebrenica. In a way, such a step is a testimony of her own lack of knowledge about the war in real time, but also the lack of knowledge of the wider community about the context of numerous cases of killings and torture that are already depicted as part of ”the war situation” in Bosnian and Herzegovinian, regional and international politics, which may absolutely not be an explanation for the perception of victims, although global wars are still raging in some regions.

Bajo is trying to give the audience an opportunity to feel the emotions evoked by piano compositions by Omer Blentić, Ernst Jandl, John Cage, Jürgen von der Lippe, Josip Magdić, Ludwig van Beethoven and compositions she wrote independently or in cooperation with Omer Blentić and Rita Rajić. At the same time, Bajo is skilled at using props such as soil, candies, piano strings and a suitcase. In her selection of minimal props and scenography, the artist is relying on the basic characteristics of her monodrama: music and movement. While taking control of the space and time, the so-called ”here and now”, and articulating the painful past, Bajo leaves only one question unanswered: when will the silence and politics of oblivion stop, and as a result of this also the related suppression of self-awareness and mindfulness? Bajo uses the stage performance and music in order to ask when the process of facing the past will be used to support the beginning of planning of the immediate and more distant future, taking into consideration the fact that without a process of facing the past, such a plan will not and may not make sense. Art is a frequent tool for facing the past and its power in the process of transitional justice may not be underestimated.

Ljupko Mišeljić is a freelance journalist from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He analyzes and researches topics related to politics, society, culture, art, transitional justice, and dealing with the past. He writes for InfoRadar, Interview, Buka, Novosti, Nacional, and Kosovo 2.0.