FROM WHAT WILL WE REASSEMBLE OURSELVES

From what will we reassemble ourselves* brings together six contemporary artists, a team of researchers and an architect to reflect on Croatian-Bosnian author Jozefina Dautbegović's question: from what fragments - images, stories, archives and historical objects - do you put together a life in the wake of a genocide?

The exhibition invites viewers to put themselves in the position of bystander in genocidal violence and to examine this position. The bystander himself often goes unnoticed or is omitted from the historiography, but his testimony lives on in the image.

The exhibition consists of new work by Anna Dasović, Selma Selman and Arna Mačkić. It also shows work by Lana Čmajčanin, Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic, Hito Steyerl and Marko Peljhan. Peljhan's work can be shown thanks to a loan from the Van Abbemuseum.

Curator

Natasha Marie Llorens is an independent writer and curator. She received her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in the United States and is currently completing her Ph.D. at Columbia University. Llorens is Professor of Art and Theory at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.

The exhibition links several artworks to the genocide that took place 25 years ago in and around Srebrenica, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The work on display represents the broader context and (pre)histories of a place where genocidal violence took place. Such as the monument, erected in memory of violence long after the storm had subsided again; the state archive, housing the justification of what was visible at the time; the personal archive and the body, bearers of history outside official historiography. Each artwork offers an angle from which a memory of violence and loss can be questioned and reimagined. In recognition of those who have survived this all-encompassing violence.

Anna Dasović (Amsterdam, 1982) has for years been intensively researching the context in which the Dutch blue helmets acted in 1995. She shows archive footage, which she obtained through an appeal to the Wet Openbaarheid van Bestuur (WOB), showing military exercises by the Dutch army, deployed to prepare soldiers for deployment in the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In her new work, she traces the way the hands of Dutch blue helmets touched the surfaces of a UN compound through the written and drawn traces of their presence. Anna's work raises questions about imaging, historiography and the construction of historical presentations.

Arna Mačkić (Čapljina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1988) is an architect and co-founder of Studio L A. She designed the exhibition architecture that refers to Mačkić's ongoing research into brutalist monuments in old Yugoslavia. Bogdan Bogdanovic realised numerous giant concrete objects at the behest of Tito, the former president of Yugoslavia.

The design symbolises how complex it is to access the history of the Bosnian territories from the Netherlands.

Marko Peljhans installation Territory 1995 (2006-2010) consists of row-thick sheets of Plexiglas, hung and inscribed with analysis maps, and electronic and radio communications from operations in and around the UN enclave. The work Territory 1995 is part of a long-term study that seeks to capture the role of tactical and strategic communications within a contemporary genocide. Territory 1995 was presented at the Istanbul Biennial in 2009 and is part of the Van Abbemuseum's collection.

Erna Rijsdijk and Guido Snel, researchers working at the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Amsterdam Center for European Studies, University of Amsterdam, present their research project Facing Srebrenica and the Future of Memory in Europe. Within this project, they collect private photographs, images of residents of Srebrenica taken by Dutch blue helmets. The collected material is shared with survivors and their relatives. The first results of this long-term digital database project are presented in the exhibition. The presentation was realised in cooperation with Iris Sikking (curatorial advice), Velma Šarić (research and interviews in Bosnia) and Tim Klaasse (video-storytelling).

Made possible by

Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Municipality of Amsterdam - Stadsdeel Oost, the Mondriaan Fund and the Van Abbemuseum.

Good to know

* The title of the exhibition is taken from Jozefina Dautbegović's poem The Unidentified (2003).

ADDRESS
Oranje- Vrijstaatkade 71 - 1093 KS Amsterdam
OPENING HOURS
Di-Zo - 12:00 - 18:00
CONTACT
info@framerframed.nl – www.framerframed.nl - @framer framed