|
|
| The Artist and War. A Tale from Bosnia Andris Vītoliņš This story is about Alma Suljević, born in 1963. The first evening we arrived in Sarajevo, we attended an event within the "Barrack" project, and that's where we met Alma. In the following week, we often called each other and went out for coffee. Drinking coffee with Alma means five to seven hours of unremitting conversation. Time has no meaning, and the only thing that ends our conversations is exhaustion and the closing of the café. Alma Suljević is a multimedia artist who has studied philosophy and sculpture. Nowadays she's a lecturer at Sarajevo Art Academy. She's participated in many internationally-known exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale. Alma completed her studies just at the outbreak of war in 1991. After graduating, she worked in her chosen field for a short time and then volunteered for the Bosnia and Herzegovina Army. This was an unusual battalion: in parallel with warfare, it engaged in cultural and entertainment activities. In Sarajevo, I was introduced to several intellectuals who had fought side by side. Translators, poets, actors and artists, all from the same unit. They spent the whole of the blockade within the besieged town of Sarajevo. |
| Succès de Scandale Jānis Frišvalds The locust and cherry trees took the brunt of the tumult. And yet as the ebony fiacre slipped through the Bois de Boulogne that late May afternoon, its path through the ‘lungs of the city' was pregnant with the threat of further conflagrations. When they came, such eruptions would flare up to the tune of random dispatches of anger, sarcasm and exhilaration from the four egos whose weight the carriage would cradle all the way to the Bateau-Lavoir and a restaurant named ‘Raprochement'. |
