The research unveiled several recurring patterns pertaining to the commemorative activities related to the 2001 conflict in Macedonia. The dominant patterns included the commemorations of the state security forces, the commemorations of the insurgents, the anniversaries of the OFA, and the commemorations of civil victims in the state. In this text, I will focus on the second one, providing its […]

The 2001 armed conflict in the Republic of Macedonia – Republic of North Macedonia as of 2019 – between the state security forces and the ethnic Albanian insurgents brought the state to the verge of a full-fledged civil war and it is nowadays viewed as the last violent escalation pertaining to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. The seven months […]

Every year on March 24, on the anniversary of NATO bombing, both officials and the media in Kosovo remember the contribution of the military Alliance in “stopping the genocide and contributing to regional peace and security”.While the NATO in Kosovo has become the longest peacekeeping mission in its history, the ‘threads of memory’ between both Serbian and Albanian communities are […]

Jo Berry daughter of a British politician who was killed in the 1984 IRA attack

The young people of the post-war generation in the Drenica region

Nexhmije Selca closes her eyes wistfully and tries to find the words to say that most of the history of opera and ballet in Kosovo is just a sound. The first three decades of the entire repertoire of the Kosovar opera and ballet troupe have been burnt, and Selca, one of the first three ballerinas in Kosovo, says that all […]

Sound researchers and composers say that for the process of memorialization, sounds can serve as allies for the societies whose past has been distorted or denied. For the people and places whose past has often been denied, sounds are considered a rich resource for documentation and remembrance. The concept of sound as a means of documenting the dealing with the […]

Music, emotions, and joy in Kosovo’s wartime The concepts of war and joy may seem almost incompatible. On one hand, there are moments of violence, displacement, and trauma, while on the other, there exist joy and positive emotions. However, an individual’s experiences during wartime can be multifaceted, and not every emotion felt during war needs to be negative. In recent […]

Music in the culture of remembrance during times of war in Kosovo Music can serve as significant emotional resource for people and create a sense of community. Moreover, it has the potential to distract from realities and inspire collective enthusiasm. In times of war, alongside its political and military functions, music can assume a central role in portraying normalcy of […]

Which events deserve to be commemorated? Who gets to have a statue and why? By Blerta Hoçia You can read part one here. Just as in the official state narrative, even in the non-official one, stories of heroes and war prevail. However, unlike the institutional narrative, the non-official one contains other stories too, spontaneously borne out of need, perhaps to […]