Vahida Maglajlić Street in Banja Luka

For the past two years and two months activists have been fighting to name a street in Banja Luka, a town known as the “city of women,” after an exceptional woman – Vahida Maglajlić. This fight has lasted longer than the wartime journey of this partisan, adorned with the Order of the People’s Hero of Yugoslavia. And […]

Markale

It has now been thirty years since February 5th was marked on Sarajevo’s memory map simply and undeniably as – Markale. Situated in the city center, the green market got its name from the nearby marketplace built during the Austro-Hungarian period (Markt halle). On February 5, 1994, it became the site of an unprecedented massacre. That day[…]

Maglaj, Truth and Propaganda

“All this happening after the war is what is the hardest thing for me. Why do we, ordinary people who are not in politics, hate each other (Not everyone!) so much? Why are they not being convinced that we should hate those who made us hate each other, to kill each other? (…) They [the politicians] agreed[…]

Sarajevo’s Homage to Caca

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[…]

Capturing Memories, Creating Stories

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[…]

Initiatives for naming streets and public spaces after women in Bosnia and Herzegovina – two years later

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[…]

Sounds of a Lost Heritage

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,[…]

Exploring and Documenting the Past Through Sound

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[…]