1.Architecture and/or Revolution? The search for answers to this complex question laid the foundations of modern architecture. As one of the great dilemmas of the 20th century, it pondered lucid ideas on the social role of architecture and its fundamental impact on man and woman as individuals and the humanity as a whole. Both as art and practice, the “modern […]

Over the centuries, Skopje has been an important cultural and historical center in its geographical environment. Its growth and significance continued unabated until its zenith, when the city was razed to the ground by Austrian General Piccolomini in 1689, derailing it from its development trajectory. At that time, Skopje was said to be a city the size of Prague, with […]

The description of fascism by Benedetto Croce as a “contemporary moral illness” can serve as a starting point for reflecting on the phenomenon of the mass erection of revisionist, negationist, and clerical-fascist monuments all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. These monuments seem to memorialize the present rather than the past. Their intention is to impress or intimidate visitors. In educational-patriarchal terms, […]

After saying “Goodbye” and the dramatic finish in the first part, it is difficult to conclude that that is all we can say about the urbanism that does not respect the past in the Macedonian capital, Skopje. The story of Skopje is certainly more extensive and more complicated and it will have to be told on many occasions. The city, […]

In 2014 I wrote a text on the Venice Biennale focusing on reading the historic strata of Kosovo’s cities how multiple layers created as a complex result of historic, social circumstances and even of political systems. It was not hard for me to identify the clear traces of every period. The will of Emperor Justinian who, through the glory of […]

My reflection on the relation between Kosovo cinemas, public spaces, community engagement, and dealing with the past is based on my ongoing experience with the process of reviving a former cinema and building a contemporary cultural institution engaged in experimental and artistic forms of research of the visual and material history. The starting point was an inherited cinema building serving […]

In the heart of Sarajevo there is a valuable artifact of collective memory, a public space which does not simply have a past, but a history: the Vraca Memorial Complex. It consists of a memorial park from the Yugoslav era and a fortress from the Austro-Hungarian period, and the spirit of this place stems from a series of events which […]

In an attempt to define the traits of this elusive Spring 2021 – with the slow departure of COVID-19 (will it be for good?) – we feel a stable, decisive, albeit not quite turbulent enough, gathering of people across Serbia with the same or similar request: “We want a better quality of life!”  This beginning of a branched out “ecological […]