Symposium: The Testimony of the Image: Visualizing War Crimes Tribunals, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

6th March 2019: As part of LCC’s Research Fortnight, this symposium explored the visual staging of War Crimes Tribunals from Nuremburg to the ICTY. The main presentation by photographer Armin Smailovic will discuss his ‘Testimony Portraits’ of witnesses giving evidence at the ICTY and his Sounds of Silence project that deals with female survivors of wartime rape in Bosnia Herzegovinia. Max Houghton of LCC spoke about her research on the embodied nature of testimony to war crimes tribunals from Nuremburg to Rwanda, whilst Professor James Gow discussed the theme of Pictures of Peace and Justice.

Art and Reconciliation Symposium, London

From 29 November – 1 December 2018 we hosted a symposium where project participants, artists, practitioners and academics explored the key themes: What is reconciliation? What practices constitute spaces of reconciliation? What do the arts have to offer in post-conflict settings? How are we to measure the effectiveness of reconciliation interventions?

BISA Conference

14-16 June 2017: Denisa Kostovicova (Department of Government, London School of Economics) and Tom Paskhalis (Department of Methodology, London School of Economics), present ‘Women Deliberators and Transitional Justice: What Kind of Voice?’. This captureskey findings from their research on RECOM, exploring the way that women participate in transitional justice.

Warm Festival and Why Remember

26 June-2 July 2017: Paul Lowe (UAL LCC) co-curates a festival and conference in Sarajevo exploring themes of journalism, art, remembrance and conflict.

Workshops

Izazov Film and Activism workshop, Kings College London.

2nd November 2019: This workshop forms part of project “IZAZOV!”, a youth-led filmmaking project in Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH) exploring how film can be used to facilitate creative thinking, dialogue and change in society.

The workshop was designed and led by the filmmakers from BiH, and included a mixture of film screenings, discussion and creative and participatory activities. This formed part of wider projects: Changing the Story (led by the University of Leeds); and The Complete Freedom of Truth (led by Opera Circus), both of which were aimed at empowering young people through an engagement with the arts.

The Artist in Post Conflict Societies workshop, Sarajevo

25 June 2018: ‘The Artist in Post Conflict Societies’ was a workshop organised in conjunction with the REconciliations exhibition that brought together regional artists at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It involved a series of practical sessions on working with institutions and writing funding proposals and a broader discussion about the social and political production of art and on the role and responsibilities of artists working in post conflict societies.

Prospects for Justice and Reconciliation in the Balkans – What is the ‘New Normal’?

Panel and workshop at the Belgrade Security Forum, 17-19 October 2018, Belgrade.

Reconciliation as Activity – Possibilities for Action, Prishtina

Policy meeting and authors’ workshop, Centre for Research and Documentation, Prishtina, March 2018.

Reconciliation Histories Workshop

30-31 January 2018: ‘Reconciliation Histories’ explores forgotten and hidden moments of (non)reconciliation to challenge what it is that is meant be reconciliation and how it is to be achieved in the contemporary era, and considers diverse examples from the Athenian wars, to the Bolshevik revolution.

Drawing workshop

A 3-day drawing workshop, led by Professor Paul Coldwell, involving a group of 15 young people ran at the end of January in partnership with the Historical Museum of Bosnia Herzegovina. The drawing workshop used both the museum’s collection and personal objects to explore what connects us as being so much more important than what separates us. The workshop culminated in an impromptu exhibition of the drawings.

‘In conflict, communities are polarized, the other becoming the representation of all negative associations. Historically this has led to regarding the other as sub-human and substituting the individual as a stereotype. I would like to work at this intersection using familiar objects as ways of addressing commonality and encouraging an understanding of things that are shared. In the drawing workshop the participants will be asked to bring a pair of used shoes + an object that they feel represents their culture… The participants will be asked to work in pairs, exchanging drawings which are collaged together or cut into strips and woven together to make composites. … We will think about ways these drawing could be brought together as if in friendship. They might be collaged, woven, sliced or traced so that a new drawing is formed’. Professor Coldwell

Read Professor Coldwell’s blog about the workshop.

Programmes

Balkan Diskurs Youth

This 12 month youth journalism training and mentoring project run by PCRC involves 18 participants ranging from 18-28 years old from all over BiH. Starting in June 2017, the participants were brought together in Sarajevo for 4 days of journalism and photography training. Over the subsequent 12 months the young people have been mentored to produce a series of stories and assignments. Encouraged to uncover stories from within their communities that relate to inter-ethnic co-operation and moral courage, the young people are supported by PCRC staff to build their journalism, media and storytelling skills. The strongest stories are published and promoted through the Balkan Diskurs online media platform. The young people have also participated in the participatory photography project, Possible Landscapes.

Balkan Diskurs Youth is a primary component of PCRC’s Ordinary Heroes, a multimedia peacebuilding program that utilizes international stories of rescuer behavior and moral courage to promote reconciliation and interethnic cooperation between Bosnia’s divided citizens and youth. The objective of Balkan Diskurs Youth is to encourage new approaches to promoting reconciliation among youth by empowering young Bosnians to take a more active role in the peacebuiling process, increasing the credibility of Bosnian youth as peacebuilding actors, building skills and promoting creativity, instilling values of tolerance and moral courage and promoting peacebuilding and inter-ethic co-operation. The project aims to catalyse a new form of participatory media that seek to challenge existing media norms by diversifying the producers and seeking out positive stories of interethnic co-operation and reconciliation.

This is the 3^rd year that PCRC have run youth journalism training. They continue to work with previous participants and support a thriving network of youth journalists throughout BiH. PCRC intend to continue supporting and working with these young people beyond the project end.

The Living Museum

The ‘Living Museum’ is a collaborative project between the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Hercegovina, King’s College London and the University of the Arts London, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and Global Challenges Research Fund to follow-on from Art and Reconciliation to enhance impact and engagement.

The project aim is to create innovative ways of researching, responding to and intervening in the museum’s extensive collection of artworks from the socialist Yugoslav period. Some of these works are being exhibited in the main exhibition space of the Museum from May to August and we are inviting artists, curators and researcher to use the Museum as an open studio space in order to engage with the collection and produce new artworks and curatorial/critical interventions.

The History Museum of Bosnia and Hercegovina collects, preserves, researches, presents, and promotes the cultural and historical heritage of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Museum was founded in 1945, and it underwent a series of transformations throughout its history. From its founding in 1945 to 1993, the Museum was focused on the history of anti-fascism in World War II, and on fostering values of the socialist state. It was known as the Museum of People’s Liberation and Museum of the Revolution.

The Art Collection followed the aims of a socialist museum – it was created to highlight the historical events and aspects of collective narrative such as the national liberation struggle, important battles and personalities, war suffering, the postwar reconstruction, and metaphors of social cohesion. For more information about the Art Collection please visit http://muzej.ba/collections-research/collections/.

After the conflict from 1992-1995 the museum was renamed the History Museum of BiH. Today, the Museum works as a platform for dialogue about the past and its relationships to the present. Underpinned by the concept of openness to society, by fostering links with the community, and offering its visitors museum items, stories and space, the museum seeks to open new perspectives in the BiH museology.

In May, we launched an open call to artists/art historians/researchers to open up the Museum’s Art Collection, and to open up the question of the Yugoslav/socialist legacy. The open call was conceived as an intervention to re-examine the role of art from the period from 1945 until 1989, and its relevance to the current situation in BiH. Participants of the ‘Living Museum’ project were invited to interact with the Museum and Art Collection in a fresh, creative way, to reveal new ways of seeing and showing both the Museum’s holdings and their own work.

Some of the collection was moved from storage in the depot to the central exhibition area, which was transformed into a cultural hub and open studio from May to August. Selected artists/art historians/researchers worked with the museum’s collections during this period, responding to the collection directly by engaging with it through a range of interventions. The outcomes will be exhibited at the Museum during October-December 2019.

Open Call

Through the research six open call commissions have made available to regional artists from the former Yugoslavia to produce work around the concept and practice of reconciliation. The open call commissions are being managed through two regional arts institutions: the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo and Stacion, Centre for Contemporary Art Prishtina, Kosovo. A public call was made for applications from regional artists. The form of the artwork was left entirely open. It could be performance, sculpture, photography, film or fine art as long as it had the potential to be exhibited. Applications that were socially engaged and participatory or collaborative in nature were particularly welcome. In the call made through the History Museum applicants were asked to respond in some way to the Museum’s permanent collection, “Sarajevo under the siege”. In the call made through Stacion it was specified that one call would be commissioned in North Kosovo.

Proposals were evaluated by a jury consisting of 5 members:

Elma Hasimbegovic, Historical Museum of Bosnia Herzegovina
Albert Heta, Stacion, Centre for Contemporary Art Prishtina
Milena Michalski, artist in residence, Kings College
Nebojša Milikić, REX Cultural Center, Belgrade
Professor Paul Coldwell, University of the Arts, London
Dr Paul Lowe, University of the Arts, London (jury secretary)

Panel discussions & seminars

Panel: Art and Conflict

Saturday 02 March 2019 12:45pm to 2:00pm. Hosted by LSE Festival: New World (Dis)Orders Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building Dr Denisa Kostovicova, Dr Nela Milic, Tom Paskhalis and Dr Ivor Sokolić discussed the role of art and visual representation in response to conflict and dealing with its consequences.

Stand Up for Human Rights: 70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Right, London

This event focused on human rights, crimes committed in recent conflicts and attempts by humanity to deal with these crimes in order to prevent them in future.

10 December 2018, 1730-1930, followed by a reception, Regent’s University London, Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4NS. For more info and to register.

Reconciliations: Art, Conflict and Experience: Mladen Miljanovic, London

Mladen Miljanović is a Bosnian Artist whose work, MWRL 100mm (Multiple Water Rocket Launcher), was exhibited in the Quad at Regent’s University London as part of the Reconciliations Exhibition in The Knapp Gallery. In 2013 he represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at 55th Venice biennale with pavilion project titled ‘The Garden of Delights’. Mladen spoke about the work in the context of his personal experience of child living literally on the frontline, growing up surrounded by soldiers, and violence and how it influenced his identity and his work.

Mon, December 3, 2018, 17.00, The Knapp Gallery, Regent’s University London, Inner Circle, London, NW1 4NS.

‘Attention’ by Touchdown Dance Company, performance followed by Q&A, London

Touchdown create in the moment within a structured score, including concepts of proximity and space, architecture (Angus Balbernie) the poetics of movement (Steve Batts), and kinaesthetic awareness (Julyen Hamilton). This 30 minute performance was followed by a Q&A with the dancers.

30 Nov 2018, 19:00 to 21:00pm, The Anatomy Museum, King’s College London (Strand Campus).

Photography and Art in Post Conflict Societies, London

In this event the photographer Ziyah Gafić and artist, Mladen Miljanović discussed their work and its relation to the post war legacy of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.Wednesday 28 November, 14.00-16.00pm, London College of Communication, Elephant & Castle, London.

Text Illuminations: Data, Discourses and Representation, London

Panel discussion with artist, Dr Nela Milic (University of the Arts London) and political scientists, Dr Denisa Kostovicova, Dr Ivor Sokolic and Tom Paskhalis of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Thursday 15 November 2018, 6.30-8.pm, The Exchange, Kings College Strand Campus.

Art and Reconciliation: A Conversation with Artists, London

Artist in Residence, Dr Milena Michalski, In Conversation with artists on the theme of reconciliation and art at The Exchange, Kings College Strand Campus, 7 November 2018, 18.30-20.00pm.

In connection with the ‘Reconciliations’ exhibitions, and bringing together some of the artists showing there with other artists whose work deals with reconciliation in the broadest sense, this public discussion reflected on a wide range of reconciliations – or not – including between art and atrocity, both past and present; the artist’s internal conflict during the making of work; between art and politics, art and psychology and between elements such as abstraction and documentation.

Evaluating Reconciliation: The Western Balkans and Beyond, London

Policy meeting, King’s College London, 8 June 2018, 1000-1600.

After the Hague Tribunal: prospects for justice and reconciliation in the Balkans, London

The panel discusseed the implications for accountability for war crimes in the Balkans following the closure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

This event was hosted by LSE Department of Government’s Conflict Research Group and AHRC-funded ‘Arts and Reconciliation’ project.

Thursday 03 May 2018 6:30pm to 8:00p, London School of Economics and Political Science

http://www.lse.ac.uk/government/events/2018/After-the-Hague-Tribunal/After-the-Hague-Tribunal-Prospects-for-Justice-and-Reconciliation-in-the-Balkans

Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice, London

The panel discussion launched a special issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies coedited by James Hughes and Denisa Kostovicova of LSE’s Department of Government.

Thursday 26 April 2018 6:30pm to 8:00pm, London School of Economics and Political Science

http://www.lse.ac.uk/government/events/2018/Rethinking-Transitional-Justice-and-Reconciliation/rethinking-transitional-justice-and-reconciliation

(En-)Gendering Transitional Justice: Silences, Symbols, Spaces and the (Anti-)Politics of Reconciliation, London

King’s College London, March 2018.

Forensic Aesthetics, London

Running from 14:00-16:00, 31 October 2018, at London College of Communications in this talk the artist Vladimir Miladinović discussed his work from the project Rendered History, which deals with wartime and post-war trauma of the former Yugoslav societies.

Knowledge Exchange on the RECOM Process, London

Policy meeting, London School of Economics and Political Science, 18 April 2018, 0930-1400.

Art and Reconciliation: Evaluating and Demonstrating the Social Impact of the Arts

Seminar, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, 14 March 2018, 10am-2pm.

‘Ricochet’ by Simon Norfolk

29 January 2018: Award winning photographer, Simon Norfolk discusses the politics of remembrance after the first world war.

Film screenings and performances

Reconciling Experience: Dance excerpt, Q&A and reception, London

21 November 2018: Choreography by Roman Baca, Fulbright Scholar, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and former US Marine.

This choreography explored how the experience of serving in the military becomes embodied and carried over into everyday life.

Film Screening: The Rope by Ziyah Gafic, London

Two athletes and friends who fought on opposing sides in Bosnian civil war meet after quarter of century for one last climb.

21 November 2018, 13:00 to 14:30 at The Exchange, Kings College Strand Campus.

Film Screening: After The Fact

7 June 2017: LSE hosts screening and discussion surrounding Henry Redwood and Ice&Fire film After the Fact, an exploration of the experience of witnessing in international courts.

Arts & Conflict Hub

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