- Its about the project with the exhumation… I got to confess I couldn’t look at these posters, somehow I know the world would not stay the same. A wo/man in the media society can somehow get used on the images of death, they are “other bodies” but as soon as they appear having something in common (maybe even only this?) – the goods of the global society we are usually facing clean and new in shops, seems that world is, as Kristeva says “contaminated” and we are faced with our own, not the death of the other.
So, the project was produced by Ajna Zlatar and me – it wasn’t me alone. In the wish to make Bosnian people closer to the Western we have made posters, on the tenth year of the genocide in Srebrenica, showing clothing of victims that were branded. Or, in a wish to make the western citizen identified with (to the one usually far away victims) we have decided to make it via known brands / commercial trademark, in which victims were slaughtered. Absurd, of course… But, if you say to a western citizen it is this and that number of people in Bosnia being killed it means a little to him/her, but if you show the victim was wearing sneakers (maybe s/he is wearing too) then, via the commercial trademark, becoming the common container a western person may identify with the victim. That is how we have chosen (from the book of clothing of victims of genocide serving to families to recognize their relatives) clothing of the leading world commercial trademarks. So, on one poster there is Levis, on the other Adidas , on the third La Costa etc.. We have put posters during the film festival in Sarajevo, when there was the most of foreigners in the city, as this project was directly addressed to them. Latter on the exhibition went to Italy (Milano) and some other cities outside of BIH. So we have tried to solve the problem of identification of westerners with Bosnian victims, on very efficient and absurd way – via commercial brands. Identification via big brands is at the same time sad and absurd and morbid in its efficiency.
- Though there is an obvious difference between the impossibility of falsifying the state of disintegration, not so familiar to this always “hyper-new” society, did someone commented the difference of your posters and Toscani’s advertising for Benetton showing Croatian soldier?
As far Toscani is concerned, all respect, but I did not have that in mind thinking on what would be needed that Europe is made closer to victims of genocide in Srebernica.
- I got to ask one more thing, do you think artworks speaking on Srebrenica, yours, Maja Bajevic, Sejla Kameric, have done something for Srebrenica?
The answer on the question if artworks have done anything for Srebrenica – precisely that much the art is capable, in the society and time we live today, to act.
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Anur Hadziomerspahic is a Bosnian designer, see more on Ideologija
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