Remember can't forget / Work cycle / Point 6 / The pendulum
The area of Old Sajmište in Belgrade is a place of many memories.
In 1937-1938, this was the site of the Belgrade Fair, where pavilions were built and cultural and commercial life took place. The first Belgrade Fair opened on September 11, 1937. And already on December 8, 1941, the Jews of Belgrade were sent to the fairgrounds, which were transformed by the German military administration into the Jewish camp Zemun (Judenlager Semlin). By December 12, there were already more than 5,000 prisoners in the camp.
In the Belgrade archives, there are 4 letters from nurse Hilda Deich, who voluntarily went to the camp to work in the camp hospital and help people. And like a large number of prisoners, she died there.
After the Second World War, the area of the fair was used to build barracks for the builders of New Belgrade (a district of the city located between Stari Sajmište and Zemun). People still live there. The Italian pavilion was given over to the workshops of the Serbian Union of Artists (there are still workshops there).
In July 2022, the reconstruction of the central tower of the fair began, which currently houses the Zemun Holocaust Museum. Next in line is the former Italian pavilion.
Once I get to this place, I can’t stop thinking about it and I come there again and again. The layers of historical traumatic context, the everyday life of the people for whom this is home, the gradual restoration of the memorial function, all this creates a very multifaceted pattern of the territory. The simultaneous presence of memory and, at the same time, the flow of ordinary life in the present against the background of this memoriality, outlines the issue of the visibility of memory and the history of the place.
Inside the Italian pavilion there are still artists’ studios. They will move soon, because this pavilion is subject to reconstruction, in the future it will house the second part of the museum. In the double-height space of the pavilion I place a pendulum. In the mirror I see my reflection, a reflection of the present, a reflection of life. The mirror is framed by a disk cast from ash. It turns out that ash mixed with water behaves like clay after drying. Framing the present life in memories of the past, of a traumatic experience. The pendulum swings and my reflection in the mirror appears for a split second. So in the context of the historical process, our life and the memory of it is a very short moment. Who and for how long will remember us? Will we leave a trace of memories. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
“For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”