ARTISTS TALKING

# 12 [9 April 2007]

This morning I went to Donja Vrba, to give photographs to Marija, Liza and Ana, three women I photographed last year. They all live in a small village near Slavonski Brod in Croatia. First I visited Marija, who lives in a large, old house. When I met her last year she was in good health, very chatty, with strong features and clear eyes. Today, she was laying in bed, looking quite weak and pale, with her daughter looking after her. Her daughter said that it was good we visited today as this Wednesday she due to have an operation. Marija was so happy I came by and she really liked the photographs. It is such an amazing feeling when the people one photographs really like the photo. It makes me feel as though the whole project is worth it, and that connection that is created during this act of sharing is very powerful. All that uncertainty seems worth bearing…
I really like Marija, she is a strong woman, who I believe will pull through…Is she more ready for the day then some of us who have not prepared our clothes and the whole attire for the final moment, I wouldn’t know…

I also met Liza, whom I photographed in the amazing room with beautifully embroidered clothing (see image in the first blog). She was well and liked the picture very much, saying that she will frame it immediately. Ana, whom I visited last was there with her family and responded generously too. All three of them asked how much money they owed me for the photographs, which was very sweet…I felt the owing is more from me to them…

Their kindness was healing…

Tomorrow I am on the road again. This time I am joined by Marcus, my husband, and we will be making our way to Mala Pilica, near Bijeljina, east Bosnia. There a friend of mine, Zeljka, has done good work in finding women who are wiling to have their clothes for death photographed…

# 11 [6 April 2007]

I am writing this from Zagreb, from a friend of mines computer. We met each other today after more then fifteen years. I cant believe it...such a long time...
He left, like myself at the beginning of the war, in 1992. His whole family left then, exchanging a house with a family in Croatia who then came to live in Bosnia...We chatted for hours, so much to say, and to get to know each other again...He hasnt been back to Banja Luka, where he grew up, for fifteen years. So, in a way, I was-am a connection to the past and possibly to the future...We agreed he must visit...Home that he imagines has become a picture in his mind, perhaps fiction, perhaps not, but it seems so important to make the physical and emotional connection again...

This afternoon I spent some time in the Home for Jewish Elderly, together with Dona Danon, an Anthropologist (who has kindly offered to help with this part of my research as she is writing an MA Theses on Sefardic Jewish women). She found out that there is a woman who is sewing the clothes for burial especially for the residents of the home, but we were not sure if the women themselves prepared anything. The seamstress was there when we arrived and had prepared the clothing, laid out with a dark sheet underneath, looking quite sombre and rather institutional. The clothing for burial consisted of the white dress which looked like a sleeping gown, the white scarve and the white socks. I was curious to find out from her that men were buried in the same clothing as the women, in the white gowns. She believed that there wasnt much deviation in terms of preparing a different type of clothing.

After this Dona spoke with a few women with whom she has established a relationship through her research and none of them had prepared such clothing (partly because the Home took care). I was greatful that she asked, as it is such a sensitive thing to ask, and through the past few weeks of speaking to the women myself I appreciated more the delicate nature of the project. On Tuesday, I met a woman who had prepared everything, but didnt want to be photographed. When I asked her why not, she said its just something inside...

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to a vivacious woman, in her 80s who told us many interesting facts about her life. She told us that the most tolerance she experienced was during the 1st Yugoslavia (which was the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovens), she said all the religions were respected and given space...She also spoke about Mesa Selimovic, one of my favourite writers, which has shaped so much of my adolescent thinking and writing aspirations...He used to visit her home, and spend long times chatting to her father...She tought this was because his relationship to his father was very distant. I have to admit it was so exotic listening such personal tales about a writer I admire so much.

# 10 [3 April 2007]

I am struck by the way women keep their pieces of clothing, wrapped in a sheet, or in travel bags, plastic bags, suitcases… One of the women, Jovana, who is 97 years old, pulled out a dusty old suitcase from underneath the bed and inside of it was a floral dress, long woollen socks (which she probably knitted), petticoat and many family photographs. It was as though she was preparing for a journey and needed to be ready at any moment...

The Orthodox priest told me that in his view, the custom of preparing clothes for death (or funeral as some also say) comes from the tradition of preparing one’s best suit or a dress for the Sunday mass and preparing for the meeting with God. A person needed to be ready and in its ‘Sunday’s best’ when meeting God…
This stayed with me and I think he has definitely touched on some of the religious background to this still mysterious custom.

I met a woman whose husband researched wedding and funeral customs in Nevesinje, in the 1950’s. She published his book posthumously and gave me one copy of the book as a gift, Obrad Micov Samardzic, “The Orthodox Weddings and Funeral Customs in Nevesinje” . Even though he focused mostly on the wedding rituals there is an interesting chapter relating to the preparation for the funeral. In it he writes that it is important to wear ‘a beautiful and new suit’ as after the funeral ‘the women will talk about the way he was buried’. Even though his text is written from a very patriarchal perspective it does give a clue as to why presentation even when dead is very important. This seems to be particularly at play in small places and communities, and in those traditions where body is seen by others.

# 9 [1 April 2007]

This blog is a bit non-chronological as I try to catch up on the last week’s journey and events…

The train journey and the impossibility of taking photographs:
The train glided slowly through Bosnia – Doboj, Kakanj, Zenica, reaching Sarajevo and on to Herzegovina reaching Mostar. The remains of the war were sticking out like scars. Ruined buildings, with bullet holes still dotting the walls, banks of rivers covered with plastic bags… New mosques, new churches, full cemeteries…It was painful to see the level of poverty and division that is present everywhere I looked. Train station names have been erased depending on the entity, cyrilic ones have been erased in Federation, and latinic ones if in Republika Srpska so one was in no doubt in whose territory one is at any time…When I talked about my pain of seeing such poverty and division to my partner he asked me if I took some photographs. I replied that I couldn’t be a tourist in my own country (but I am some sort of a visitor) and that I couldn’t bring myself to take photographs. It is as though I felt anaesthetised and from that numbness couldn’t create…
I was able in the evening to jot down only a few disjointed words, in my own language this time (I predominantly write in English).
Ne mogu fotografisati oronule zgrade, ostatke rata, balkone sa odjecom, smece rasuto…Ta ideja mene kao turiste boli, nema dovoljno distance, zemlja suvise bliska…
I can not photograph ruined buildings, war remains, balconies with clothes, rubbish strewn…The idea of me as a tourist hurts, there is not enough distance, the land is too close…

I am beginning to understand what Theodor Adorno meant when he commented that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”.

# 8 [31 March 2007]

After eight hour train journey from Banja Luka to Mostar via Sarajevo, pulled by a train engine on which it said ‘Republika Srpska Rails’ and upon arriving to Mostar the engine has become ‘Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Rails’ I arrived to a depressing looking train station in Mostar and was picked up by an Orthodox priest and his priest trainee (also a Theology student). {Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into two parts Republika Srpska and the Federation – sounding like something from the star wars. Even my train ticket had a different pricing for different ‘entities’ as they call them.}
When we spoke on the phone prior to meeting at the station the priest described himself as wearing the priest robes (at which point I didn’t bother giving him my description) as it definitely wasn’t difficult to recognise him in long black cloak, and a black cap. It took us an hour on a windy road up a mountain to reach Nevesinje, a small town where he lived with his family (Orthodox priests can merry), running an Orthodox church. I was so intrigued about their lives, having grown up in the socialist Yugoslavia, and not having much contact with religion. (I remember as a child staying with my mother’s family in Croatia and thinking that God only existed there as they were the only people I knew who went to church and who had the scary looking pictures of angels and other dramatic looking characters.) So we chatted rather informally in the car, me quizzing them about priesthood, them describing me their ‘career’ paths, of studying Theology, which lasts four years, then one can do Masters etc etc and e.g for four years one of the subjects is a History of Religion and even though they primarily train to be priests in the Orthodox tradition, they for example learn about Islam for an academic year and so on. They dropped me off to a private accommodation where I was to stay with a family, who run a sort of B&B, or village tourism.
The priest told me of a two women who agreed to be photographed, and accompanied by a driver, a priest assistant and dodgy old golf (now that’s what I call doing the fieldwork in style) we set off the following day to our first visit. Ljubica lived in Nevesinje, and we were welcomed by her and her daughter. I negotiated where we should take photographs, and managed to convince her to take them in her bedroom, as there were five people in the by now very smokey living room (it never ceases to amaze me how much people smoke here - a friend in Banja Luka told me it is the curse of the third world countries).

I always leave to the women to arrange how they want to present the clothes; it is their personal choice how they spread it out and nearly everyone immediately has their own notion of how they like it to be arranged for photographing.

I am forever plagued by the questions of ethics as this practice of entering personal places and ‘taking’ a photograph is on some level exploitative and I am constantly asking myself if I have explained correctly what the photograph is for, and even though I do ask for signatures on a model release form, a sense of having taken something away stays with me.

After the first visit we drove another half an hour to the village nearby, accompanied by a daughter of the second woman who agreed to be photographed. There, we were offered a coffee, which I must not drink anymore as it is so strong and black that couple of those a day and my heart begins to jump a beat. The family lived in a basic village condition, growing their own food and I thought it was interesting that in the UK I pay so much money for the organic food and farming in the organic way has become a bit of a middle class thing - thinking here of that programme, was it on the BBC about a young couple running their organic farm, he reminded me a bit on Jamie Oliver, and the whole series had this sexy farming message written all over it.

I will write more again, as I try to catch up on the last week…but right now I am going to catch up on much needed sleep!

# 7 [26 March 2007]

I have finally found a bit of time and space to try and focus on finding a few words. The last few days have been eventful…

I have been talking to many, many people about the project and about the search for women who prepare clothes in which they wish to be buried. I have been showing the photographs from the last research trip, and the feedback has been very encouraging.
The process of research has developed an interesting dynamic: other people are asking other (mostly) women if they know someone who has prepared such clothes. This vast network of women is expanding and I feel as though my work is filtering through to many people, in this different format, it is becoming a performative relational work.
Conversations have sprung up here and there as women discuss their memories of their mothers, aunties, neighbours etc having such clothes prepared, as they discuss the portrait of women in photographs and their almost nostalgic view on the aesthetic of their grandmothers which they recognise in some of the photographes, the domestic spaces too evoke so many memories and feelings and more…
I went and spoke to women’s group ‘Duga’ (Duga is a non-governmental organisation which organises a range of activities for and by women). One of the women mentioned that her late aunt had prepared everything including a small mirror, thread and a needle, about which she is still perplexed. We had a good chat, and they said they will ask around and find out.

There have also been a few misunderstandings as some people thought I was looking for traditional folk clothes and women to be photographed in their ethno village surrounding. I nearly went on a long bus trip into town where very generously a group of colleagues (of a friend) offered to help. A phone call later and I had to cancel the trip because they didn’t realise I was looking specifically for the ‘funeral clothes’ (as some people also call it), and when I explained the nature of the research they said that this was too sensitive and they were uncomfortable asking on my behalf. This happened again yesterday as I went to a village near Banja Luka. A friend of my mother is a doctor, who asked one of her patient if she could help me out. This woman then collected from the village all the traditional folk clothes. When I turned up at her house, after we all had a cup of very strong black coffee, she showed me the room where she laid out all the traditional folk garments. It was very sweet of her to have gone into so much trouble and I had to be very sensitive not to offend her in saying that I was specifically looking for clothes which has someone personally prepared. Tactfully, I did explain myself, but also I photographed the traditional folk garments she laid out – there were beautiful pieces of clothing, all handmade and hand-woven. She had also arranged for a man in the village who collects old traditional objects to show them to me. I really liked his one string instrument called ‘gusle’ which he made himself from the wood; on one end of ‘gusle’ he carved a symbol of the birth of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (also known as SFRJ) and on the other end he carved a church from his place of birth. I tried to gather which one came first, as in his ‘gusle’ a whole history could be sung – from religion to socialism and back – but his answer was a bit slippery…I think the socialist sign came first but am not sure. (Gusle is a traditional instrument used for singing songs of historical and epic content, so it is fitting to have such symbols carved into it).

I wanted to speak directly to one of the women from the village who have ‘donated’ folk clothes for the shoot, as I was hoping that I still may find that one of them has prepared such clothes. After driving through muddy and narrow road we reached one house, but the woman there said that she is too young for preparing clothes for death. But a woman we visited in the second house said she has such clothes and agreed to be photographed. Yes, I was so pleased to have persevered in my detective work. Her clothes were all kept in a yellow ‘Camel’ bag, and were prepared by her daughter in law who lives with her son in Switzerland. I photographed her and her clothes, and filmed a short interview about her preparation, and reaction to a very organised daughter in law. In my previous journey I tended to photograph clothes and then portrait but now I am trying to capture them all together, within the domestic setting.

I decided that I won’t post images of the women and their clothes yet, as it still all too fresh, plus images I have available are from a small digital camera whereas the final piece will be photographs from the medium format camera. This is also a new experience as I recently purchased Mamiya 7ii and am absolutely loving it. I am a bit concerned about the flimsiness of the negative as it comes in these rather open looking roles which when changing the film I very carefully take out and keep in a dark box. It should all hopefully work out as I did some tests before going on the project to try out different negs, exposures, camera etc which was a very useful exercise.

And finally to add to this lengthy blog that I have been thinking more about my ambivalent relationship to blogging and I think it has something to do with the fact that I am working on a sensitive and personal subject, many people are involved in either taking part or helping me to find the participants and I feel huge responsibility of being fare to everyone involved. Negotiating the personal nature of the project with the very public nature of the web site is part of the tension of blogging that I feel and will see how I negotiate these spaces.

Tomorrow I am taking a train to Mostar, where I will be picked up by an Orthodox priest with whom I will be stationed for couple of days. He has kindly offered to help with the project. I am so looking forward to this new unknown chapter.

# 6 [25 March 2007]

I wrote the last post with a heavy heart. Yesterday, as I was walking to the part of town where I grew up, to visit my father, I felt a sense of ease come upon me at the thought of acknowledging the impossibility of writing about complex emotions that being here and doing the project evokes in me. Perhaps there is an inherent failure in trying to conjure up the words when they are not ready, when I am not ready.

# 5 [23 March 2007]

I am still formulating so many thoughts and digesting events of this week. So much happened and I am forever amazed at the resourcefulness and generosity of people here. The first couple of days were spent contacting various people, mostly speaking to women who are my mother’s customers and friends. Everyone has been so open and willing to help out.

One of my mother’s friends said that her mother in law has mentioned recently about the clothes she has prepared. But, when she asked her mother in law if she would be willing to have the clothes photographed she refused. And this is one of the challenges of this project, the subject of death is a sensitive one and therefore asking people to ask their grandmothers, mothers, aunties, neighbours is a tricky one, and clothes for death are personal and intimate belongings, therefore not many people want to share them with others then the family.

Having said that, today I visited Marija, who is going to be 94 on the 18th April, she was born in 1913! I was introduced to her by a friend who is a nurse, and who as part of her job is visiting elderly at home. She also helped me last year with the project. Marija is being cared for at home, living with her family. During the civil war she had to escape her home and come as a refugee, walking from Sanski Most to Banja Luka (around 80km). Amongst very few things she brought with her is a dress she sewed herself (she used to be a seamstress) and which she wants to wear when she dies. I photographed her with her dress laid out next to her…I also recorded some her remarkable life stories…Having survived three! wars, she remembers (however patchy) various armies, regimes and changes of the governments. Her grandson, who is a journalist, set next to her, and prodded her to say various bits of stories…the one that really stays with me is from WW2, about a German soldier who ran into her house and started crying; she was startled by this and hid in one of the rooms, when this soldier had a good cry he told her to keep quiet and went outside…

# 4 [20 March 2007]

I’d like to share some musings on 'nostalgia' I just had with a friend of mind Ansuman Biswas, who is currently in India, on a an Arts Council England Research Placement at HP Labs, India. His blog is http://diffractionbangalore.blogspot.com/

Hi Margareta,
What you say early on about nostalgia for 'home' really resonated with me. What happens when you visit somewhere without that halo of emotion, and start relating to it as just another place? I certainly felt that happening as I came back to India last week. After less than three weeks in London!

HI Ansuman,
glad it resonated with you, yes, it is interesting that lack of nostalgia this time. The transition from one place to another seems more seamless...and I feel more grounded...I thought that meant that I am not ready, but maybe I was more ready then any other time?
I was thinking that this time you are actually living in India, rather then visiting, so it is more real, also more close, more intimate...Is nostalgia a way of keeping the idea of home intact whilst on some level not engaging with the reality, with what's really there?

Hi Margareta,
I constantly want what I haven't got. I'm surrounded by fields of desire. In fact I'm nothing but the landscape. As I realize that the greenness of the grass, on the other side of a fence I build, is only an optical illusion, I learn to stay put. What's left when I'm not looking somewhere else? That's when the real work starts. But that's only if I can avoid the incessant hurdling of fences in
search of the ultimate green grass. Or the stagnation of nostalgia, which as you rightly say, can be a buffer against reality.

All this applies, I think, not just to place, but also to action, insofar as all action is based on desire. With each new satisfaction, if addiction can be wrestled down, the craving for more may be understood and quenched.
Eventually the wisest thing to do is nothing.
Takes a lot of hurdling to get there though. Which is I guess why we're travelling the world. Have fun!

Hi Ansuman,
That is beautiful said, I can feel the meditation just by reading your words. Doing nothing for me is about creating connection with stillness which is so important in order to see how it all works, nostalgia, desire, action...But it is an ongoing challenge for me to 'do nothing', especially here, with so many undercurrents present. I can feel them - childhood memories, familiar smells, learnt behaviour, all of it has such power. It is seductive and repulsive at the same time. There are so many deep deep levels in which to understand 'going home' and 'being home', and yes, it takes a lot of hurdling...But like you say maybe that's why we keep travelling...

# 3 [19 March 2007]

This one is going to be a long one as I try and catch up…

Arrived to Zagreb, Croatia on Thursday afternoon, after an amusing flight where I sat next to two! Pilots who usually fly for Pakistan Airways, this time they were on route to Dubrovnik for a worldwide pilot conference (imagine 2000 pilots in one place, who will fly the planes then?). As they took seriously their role of explaining to me the intricacies of flying, I wasn’t sure if this newly acquired knowledge will finally liberate me from my schizophrenic relationship to flying.

In Zagreb, I checked in a nice Youth Hostel situated right next to the large and imposing chocolate factory ‘Kras’. As I was approaching the hostel, I could smell the sweet almost sickly smell of caramel in the air, and wandered if people who live here eat too much or none chocolate, as I doubt one can stay unaffected by this giant. (talking of chocolate, the mint chocolate went down a treat; maybe I should buy some Kras chocolate and bring it back to London as souvenirs)

Friday was filled with meetings. I had a chat with one of the curators of PM Gallery, an artist run space, in an unusual building, usually referred as ‘the mosque’. Its history is interesting, it was built following the plan of sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. In 1941, by a decree of the president of the Independent State of Croatia (Ante Pavelic known for its links to Nazi Germany), the House was closed and transformed into a mosque. Stucco decorations and three minarets were added following the project of the architect S. Planic. The museum of People's Liberation was founded in 1945.The minarets were pulled down in 1949. The returning of the building to the artists was requested with the exhibition called Documents-Arguments, and the request was fulfilled in 1991. The reconstruction of the building started in 2000.
For more info on the gallery and photos following the historical transformation please visit their site http://www.hdlu.hr/AboutUs.html

Had a fascinating meeting with Ethnologist at the Museum of Ethnography, Zagreb. She told me that in the early 1900 pregnant women would make a procession with their best clothes or their wedding dress before giving birth as in those days birth represented a risk, a potential death. This stayed with me, that women lived with that choice and vivid possibility of dying in order to give birth to a child. How many women gave their lives so that we as a human race continue? I almost feel uncomfortable putting it in such heroic term, but it is a form of heroism, no?!


This was followed by a nice lunch with Renata whom I met last time at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore, and who has been very supportive of my project, even faxing me some info she dug out during one of her own research trips to Sarajevo. She is a sharp writer, so I snapped up a book, co-edited by her, titled ‘Od Roda do Naroda’, translated as ‘From Gender to the Nation’, which sounds really interesting. I also snapped up a book ‘Ethnology of Proximity: Poetics and Politics of Contemporary Fieldwork’, which I hope will be helpful in terms of research and fieldwork that is ahead of me. The Institute of Ethnology and Folklore is a brilliant snazzy organisation publishing timely and reflexive research on the contemporary societal matters. http://www.ief.hr/

I wanted to see a few more galleries, and as they are open until 8pm! I was able to visit gallery Miroslav Kraljevic, who was showing work by a young artist from Turkey Ahmet Ogut. Curious work, exploring masculity or rather the impossibility of masculity - especially in a video piece ‘The Death Kit Train” where a large group of man are pushing a car, or rather few man are pushing a car and the rest of them are pushing those which are pushing the car. www.g-mk.hr

Another space worth checking out is Nano Gallery, which is hidden inside an archway but central enough to be found. It is a small space currently showing contemporary art projects, which are existing solely on the internet, their web page is www.artenativa.hr/reload.htm
I ended up talking with the gallery assistant and it transpired that she also lived in London in the early 1990’s. We started chatting more and really got on, ended up being joined by one of her friends and going for a drink in the nearby bar. Both of them were disillusioned by the current situation in Croatia and felt that the nationalism and provincialism were still very present. She regretted that she came back from London, and I almost felt a tinge of guilt for having stayed in London. We had a thoroughly good chat about everything including the Croatian Venice Biennale scandal – having changed their mind at the last minute about whom they want to represent Croatia. (first it was going to be David Maljkovic but then under shady circumstances it was decided that it will be artist Ivana Franke). I am not aware of their work, so will look them both up!

I should just add another great space which I managed to visit, it is Nova Gallery ran by a very interesting curatorial group WHW (What, How & for Whom) which were showing an exhibition temporary services motherfuckers www.temporaryservices.org + some info about WHW http://www.projekt-relations.de/de/explore/zagreb/veranstaltung.php

All this in one day and I was ready for a trip towards my sweet, sickly chocolate factory.

The following day I had enough time to meet with Dona, whom I met last Autumn. She is an Anthropologist writing an MA thesis on Sefardic Jewish women who came as refugees from Sarajevo to Zagreb, in the ‘last war’, and who live in the home for elderly people. When we met last year, we talked about possibly working together, if it transpires that the women she is in contact with have prepared such clothes and of course if they are willing to take part. Dona updated me that she spoke with the caretaker who will find out and who will this week get back to Dona if and when it will be possible to interview and photograph the women. She also explained that the Care home has taken upon itself to make special white gowns and white scarves for those women who express a wish in being buried in that way. She will find out who sews them and perhaps there is more to it…So, I should know this week if I will be going to Zagreb for a few days.

One month does not feel enough for all the research I want to do.