127 km by road from Mostar…24 hours in Sarajevo…
During the Seige of Sarajevo in 1992, the library was destroyed. Most of the 1.5 million volumes, and 155 rare books and manuscripts were burnt. People tried to rescue the books whilst under sniper fire…
Earlier that day, a man tells me that it is now the city hall, that the library sits somewhere within its new walls, that they still have some books, that the shelves are still more than half empty…
At 8pm, when the building is closed, and in an act of temporal remembrance, I decide to mount the steps to the reconstructed building. With my back to the river, passing buses and a passer by, I kneel and project onto the front of the building. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see CCTV cameras.
I inhale skin/paper/ash/. Memory adoption. Positioning my body seems crucial, slightly unstable, so I have to work hard at keeping still, and not lose the sense of myself in the space.
Paper becomes symbolic of endeavour, echoes, chaos and collection.
‘Exilic patterns of repetition, reconstruction and release, exilic identity’.
I must have read and copied this into my own notebook before leaving, and it now plays on my mind…patterns?
And here I am, at these doors, a small memorial act…
Tonight, a greater sense of blurred boundaries, together with the slight of hand that documents intimacy…
