Remember can't forget / work cycle
My father died when I was 2.5 years old. I learned of his existence when I received my passport. I tried to find his grave several times, alone and with my mother’s help. I saw the house where he lived in his youth when I was 41. I walked up and down the cemetery in the village, which is located on the edge of the Ryazan region. But a very large number of graves there do not have plaques with names and dates. Iron crosses, iron fences, impersonal and forgotten. In addition to the grief and disappointment from fruitless searches, I thought about memory and a specific place that can serve as a practical point of this memorial of mine. This place has no meaning for the past, for the person who passed away. It has meaning for me in the present. These are the geographical coordinates where I can bring my trauma, this is a monument to my pain. And then I think about how soon I myself will become an impersonal grave that will be forgotten. “For dust you are and to dust you shall return.”
The war began when I was 42 years old. It is not the past, it is the present. A traumatic experience that lasts and does not end, it has not yet become the past. But everyday ordinary life is also my present. I notice how the ordinary tries to obscure the traumatic. This is a defensive reaction of the psyche. But I bring back repressed memories of trauma. Drifting and wandering through the present that will not lead to the destination. There are no geographical coordinates where I can bring my trauma, no monument to my pain.
The area of Stari 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 had been transformed by the German military administration into the Zemun Jewish camp (Judenlager Semlin). By December 12, there were already more than 5,000 prisoners in the camp.
The Belgrade archives contain 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 fairgrounds were used to build barracks in which the builders of New Belgrade (a district of the city located between Stari Sajmište and Zemun) lived. 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, which currently houses the Zemun Holocaust Museum, began. Next in line is the former Italian pavilion.
Once I have come to this place, I cannot 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. The sports school in the Spasichev Pavilion (the former building of the camp hospital), still functioning artists’ studios in the Italian Pavilion, a restaurant in the Turkish Pavilion (the former morgue of the camp), the Holocaust Museum in the reconstructed central tower of the Fair, apartments in the barracks, two memorial monuments from 1984 and 1995, various technical objects — this is what the territory of Old Saimišt is now filled with.
The project «Remembering is impossible to forget» is a series of site-specific works, with which I wanted to emphasize the background of the historical context of traumatic experience for the everyday life of the present.
Wound inside. Point 1
Installation
810x620x200 mm
Steel wire, plexiglass
Next to the 1984 memorial plaque, in memory of “the forty thousand people from all over our country who were cruelly tortured and killed there,” there are clotheslines stretched out on the street to dry. Washed clothes keep appearing there. Women come out with basins and hang their laundry in the sun. I hang my work nearby. My laundry dissolves in the environment, the wire frame refers to the tragic context of the place. A transparent cube, like transparent memories, inside which there is a trauma — a crosshair of barbed wire. A fragment of memory that cannot be extracted, which reminds of itself by stirring in the body of memory.
Not far away, at an outdoor table, women drink coffee in the morning and talk. I worry that they might start asking questions about what I am doing here. But they continue to talk, and then they take the cups and tray and go inside the barracks. The work dissolves in space, I become invisible and dissolve with it.
Through the ghostly cube of memories, a material reminder of the events of the past can be seen, a memorial plaque from 1984, next to which lies a dried wreath.
Hilda’s Letter. Point 2
Installation
200x200x4 mm
Plexiglass, marker
Nurse Hilda Dajč volunteered for the Zemun concentration camp, considering it her duty to help people. Words from her letter (which she wrote from the camp to her friends who were free): “Stalno razgovaram sa vama i želim da vas vidim jer ste vi za mene onaj izgubljeni raj” (“I keep talking to you and want to see you, because you are my ‘lost paradise’”). These words contain both hope and despair. An appeal to the outside world, which is becoming increasingly ghostly, like the dissolving shadows of letters. I write these words on Plexiglas sheets and use them to cover the broken parts of the windows in one of the barracks. To make the memory of these words visible, to supplement reality, everyday life with shadows of the past — this is the return of the materiality of memory. The sun falls so that gradually the shadows of the words dissolve on the surface of the landing, the word «Paradise» practically blurs into a barely recognizable silhouette of letters. These shadows are like an appeal from a dead person to those living today.
A woman passes by, she returns with an empty basin after hanging the laundry outside to dry. She knocks her knuckle on the plate, says: «Hmm, plastic» and passes by. She does not read the shadows of the words.
The Curve of Forgetting. Point 3
Installation
290х210 mm
An old building block (found on the site),
engraving
Next to the central tower of the former fair, there is a building block. It is entwined with a creeper that has grown through it (new life has even broken through the concrete), snails and various insects live in it. The block is very similar to a memorial tombstone, forgotten, like in old cemeteries, when there is no one left to look after it, so it has become a new stronghold of life in the environment, which gradually absorbs it. I engrave on this block the “curve of forgetting” or “Ebbinghaus curve”, a graph that clearly demonstrates the process of forgetting in relation to time. The more time passes from the moment of the event, the more, but also the slower, the forgotten. At the same time, the strength of the preservation of information in memory enhances repetition. What can we do to prevent a tragic experience from being repeated? Return ourselves to memories, do not allow time to dissolve the mistakes of the past in oblivion.
The sound of the engraving machine is very loud and unpleasant. But it does not bother anyone, despite my concerns. The boy is swinging on a swing, his mother is walking next to the dog. The dog is pulling on the leash, trying to get closer to me. The woman apologizes and leaves, calling her son with her, who is looking at me with childish curiosity.
Ashes of sorrow
Installation
390x390x390 mm
Plexiglass, OSB, ash, ceramics
Near the Spasichev Pavilion there are concrete cubes that limit the parking lot. Whole cubes gradually turn into destroyed and broken ones, into fragments. I continue this series with a transparent cube filled with ash. Ashes gradually fill the head, just as grief can gradually absorb a person. The work symbolizes the ancient Jewish custom of sprinkling ashes or earth on the head, mourning misfortune, their own or that of their loved ones. You can drown in grief with your head, go completely into ashes and cease to exist. But will anyone notice it? It may happen that it will remain only a background for the everyday life of those around you.
I observe the life around me. A car drives up and parks 20 cm from the work. A man gets out and asks what I am photographing, asks what it means. After answering, he passes by. A cat walks along the pavilion porch, and cars continue to drive by. A very drunk man approaches and asks if I am a tourist. He does not notice that I am filming. He asks for money and moves on. Life goes on as usual.
Library of Memories. Point 5
Installation
1305x630x200 mm
OSB, sand, acrylic
Behind the barracks there is a row of sheds, in which the inhabitants of the barracks store old things. In one of the gaps between the sheds you can see the 1995 monument to the victims of the Zemun concentration camp. At the moment, there is a reconstruction of the landscaping near the monument, so there is a sand preparation in front of it. It is on this sand base, exactly along the axis of the monument, that I place an object, the shape of which is based on the image of library card indexes and, at the same time, on the image of a columbarium. The memories that we store in the card index gradually seep through our fingers like sand and disappear into oblivion. The slits in the front of the boxes are made in the form of the letters “izgubljeni raj”, quoting a letter from Hilda Deich, who wrote it from the camp territory to her friends who were free. Freedom is the other side of the river, clearly visible but so unattainable that Hilda compares it to paradise. Sand, which fills the boxes, flows through the slits, seeps in and gradually empties them, as it does with the card index of memories.
A construction worker passes by, a woman sits on the curb and talks on the phone. They do not pay attention to what is happening. A girl comes up from behind, judging by her face and look, she reads the inscription. She takes out her phone and takes a photo of the installation. The photos will remain not only with me.
The pendulum. Point 6
Installation
500x500x20 mm
Ash, water, steel wire (frame), mirror, wooden rod (suspension, 4.8 m)
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.”