Jo Berry daughter of a British politician who was killed in the 1984 IRA attack and the perpetrator Patrick Magee have struck up a friendship since 2000 when they decided to come to terms with their bitter past and engage in reconciliation. Sitting at a small table of a tiny restaurant in Pristina, Jo Berry and Patrick Magee […]
In late September, an inscription was written on the memorial plaque in Kazani in huge red letters: Caco lives in us 10 br (the “10 br” being the acronym of the 10th Mountain Brigade of the Army of BiH, whose first commander was Mušan Topalović “Caco”). This heinous act of desecration of the already modest symbol of[…]
The young people of the post-war generation in the Drenica region of Kosovo have come of age in a unique and complex context shaped by the aftermath of conflict and war. Growing up in the shadow of the Kosovo War in 1998/1999 these individuals have witnessed the enduring effects of conflict on their families, communities, and the[…]
The initiative ”Peace with a Woman’s Face” that involves 13 women’s non-governmental organisations from Bosnia and Herzegovina and forumZFD initiated a campaign entitled ”100 Women – 100 Streets Named after Women” at the end of 2021. The idea was to make the names of public spaces in our country gender-sensitive. More specifically, in practical terms this meant[…]
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,[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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[…]
Imagine that there was a memorial plaque on the wall of the former police station in the regional centre of Bosnia Posavina region. A memorial plaque with an inscription indicating that Bosniaks and Croats from Brčko were tortured in the building, and especially in the room number thirteen. Just because they had different names, some of them[…]
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[…]
Which events deserve to be commemorated? Who gets to have a statue and why? by Blerta Hoçia For the time being, in Kosovo, some of these questions receive spontaneous and casual answers. There is no museum of memory or any special central level regulatory law on memorialisation to determine the standards and guidelines about memorials. The only institution[…]
On Friday, I watched my fellow citizens go to Prijedor for a commemoration of victims of the military operation Oluja. Everything was the same as two months ago, when they went to an assembly to support Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade, which was also organised by the local SNSD and entailed a non-working day and extended weekend, flags[…]