Milica Tomic: "The Art of Remembrance"

7/23/2019 Milica Tomic: "The Art of Remembrance"

1/27

1

1. Introduction

Monuments accompany the growth of nations. They are explicitly created to

commemorate a person or important event, or which has become important to a social group

as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or as an example of

historic architecture. In the recent years, there has been a change in a way we perceive a

monument. Robert Musil believed that "there is nothing in the world as invisible as a

monument."

1

As kind of an answer to this thesis, a new discourse on monuments (anti-

monuments, counter-monuments,invisible monuments, monument in waiting, to list

only a few newly emerged artistic concepts) became visible.

In this paper I will analyze some selected works of the artist Milica Tomic through the

concept of monument building and reconstruction of events, and try to elaborate what these

kind of actions mean to the people and to the collective memory of one nation. I will be

writing about the artists works that in the center focus on the historical events that occurred

on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia and on the social amnesia and collective memory of the

people from that territory, particularly people from Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. During the

course of my research of Milica Tomic, the main questions that arose and which this paper is

trying to answer areis it possible for an artist to create an immaterial monument? Can an

artist, by creating such a monument, draw attention to it, him/herself and the event that

happened (the event for which this monument is being created)? Can such a monument break

the social amnesia?

Through a series of examples of her work I will try to answer these questions and

show that, in her work, Milica Tomic deals with the questions of social amnesia and politics

1Robert Musil, Monuments, Posthumous Papers of a Living Author,(1936)


2/27

2

of memory by creating non-material (immaterial) monuments and by reconstructing hidden

crimes. Also, the work of The Monument Group, the intellectual group which Milica is a

founding member, is understood as building of a monument with discourse or building of a

distributive monument.2I will argue that in the case of the works of Milica Tomic, it is

possible to break the social amnesia and that it is possible to heal the society by these kind of

interventions. I actually think that these sort of interventions, in collaboration with the

government are mandatory for the people to break from their selective forgetfulness and to

accept their history, to keep the past in mind in a way that draws guidance to the future. As

Clarke E. Cochran in his article says: Acceptance and moving on must begin with

remembering, and these are essential steps toward the ability to carve a new future3.

But first, we must ask ourselvesis it necessary for an artist, who is producing

political art, to become political? In my opinion, Milica does not comment from a neutral

correct viewpoint, she is expanding the realm of art and introducing it to the field of

political, making art that is not addressing, talking to politics but actually making art that is

political or making art politically4. She is very political but her opinion is not coming, is not

produced from an ethnic or national standpoint. To understand this in the context of Milica

Tomic, it is paramount to try to comprehend the historical events that occurred on the territory

of Yugoslavia, now Serbia, the territory which Milica calls her home.

Milica Tomic was born in 1960 in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a

country which no longer exists. Since her birth, the country in which Milica was born changed

its name and territory 4 times (SFRJ, Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, Serbia with and

2I am referring to Prague Biennale of 2007. where they produced a distributive monument a publication withtranscript of the talk betwen group members under the title Politics of Memory (Monument ofTransformation).3Clarke E. Cochran, Joseph and the Politics of Memory, The Review of Politics, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Summer,

2002), pp. 4434Milica Tomic, Stanford Humanities Center/SiCa Arts Writer/Practitioner in Residence 2011, discussion about

the project "The Four Faces of Omarska." -https://vimeo.com/31114875
https://vimeo.com/31114875https://vimeo.com/31114875https://vimeo.com/31114875https://vimeo.com/31114875


3/27

3

without Kosovo).5Widrich Mechthild in her work writes that during the Tito era in the former

Yugoslavia, there was a lot or censorship and indoctrination of the artists which, we can see in

the performances of Marina Abramovic from that time.6My opinion is that, in fact, modern

art was not censored during the Tito era. Yugoslav art was not affected by the dogma of social

realism as it was the case in other socialist countries. Only one major rule applied: Tito, as

the image and the name, was not to be touched. And in fact, only those works that directly

and critically alluded to his personality were seriously dealt with and their authors were

arrested.7.I viewed Yugoslavia as a success story of sorts; there was probably hardly a time

before or after the 1980s when so many people in this region were doing so well. At least

visible progress had been made in the areas of workers rights, womens rights, and education.

In the eighties, Yugoslavia still had a relatively high level of freedom. Freedom of travel, for

instance. And you could also see Western movies. I believe that most people did not perceive

the regime as repressive, even though, of course, repression did exist8. The real era of

censorship and oppression over the artists came during the Milosevic presidency. This time

was marked by a certain degradation in the field of arts, and the omnipresent power of kitsch.

Art practice which pretended to become the official art of the Milosevic era is ridiculed

because its excessive use of references (folk and historical myths) as well as for the explicit

mixture of religion and eroticism. The very existence of art practices that attempted to make

political statements and used political references as rough material, was an achievement, per

se.9One of the artists that made political art in that time was Milica Tomic. In one of her

5The last change was the autonomy of Kosovo, in 2008.6Widrich Mechthild, Performative monuments. The rematerialisation of public art, Manchester Univ. Press,2014. pp.1027Branislav Dimitrijevic, The Grand Compromise: On examples of the Use of Political References in Serbian

Art of the 90s and its Historical Background, in Strategies of Presentation I, 2000/2001, Svet umetnosti/Worldof art8We seem to have forgotten out anti-fascist traditions: Milica Tomic in conversation with Andreas Stadler, incatalogue of Serbia: Frequently Asked question, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, 20079Branislav Dimitrijevic, The Grand Compromise: On examples of the Use of Political References in Serbian

Art of the 90s and its Historical Background, in Strategies of Presentation I, 2000/2001, Svet umetnosti/World

of art


4/27

4

interviews she said that for her art, the main reason she became political was Milosevics

entry to power. I became aware that politics crept into our lives and it has become part of our

most private, most personal decisions.10During the nineties, a strange mechanism of

censorship was taking hand. On one side, the extremely graphic images of atrocities

committed upon the Serbs during the WW2 were used as an important tool in getting a sort of

a support from the people for the killings that would be committed by the Serbs in Bosnia and

Croatia. On the other hand, photos depicting the atrocities done by the Serbs were not being

shown and were considered insignificant (all sides committed crimes).11This concealment

of war was the main initiator for Milica Tomic to start making political art.

2. Reconstruction of the crimes.

One of the strategies as a part of Milicas praxis is reconstruction of the crimes, mass killings.

a. XY Ungelst- The Reconstruction of the Crime (1996-7) [Fig.1]

In the eighty-nine I learned that thirty-three people were killed in Kosovo. During the

three day demonstrations. At the same time, Belgrade was celebrating the twenty-eighth of

March, now a forgotten holiday, the day of the new Constitution of Serbia, exactly the one

who abolished the autonomy of the provinces and the first act of secession. Information about

the killing of these people has never been published in Serbian media. Nor that the army and

police was involve in this.12The theme of this work is about the crime of absolute forgetting

of the killing of the demonstrators, ethnic Albanians, citizens of the Socialist Federal Republic

10Interview with Milica Tomic, https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/11If interested in reding more about the war in the nineties, I strongly recommend - Nina Caspersen, Belgrade,

Pale, Knin: Kin-State Control over RebelliousPuppets?, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 59, No.4 (Jun. 2007), pp.

621-64112Interview with Milica Tomic, https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-

ispitivanja/


5/27

5

of Yugoslavia. On March 28th 1989 they protested against the abolishment of the political

subjectivity guaranteed to them by the existing Federal constitution.13In this video

installation, Milica is, along with several other known members of the Belgrade art

community, acting in the role of the murdered Albanians. They posed in shabby clothing

from the mid-eighties, in order to mark individual symbols for each and every ethnic Albanian

murdered in a particular incident. [Fig.2] These garments were an actual reconstruction of the

original clothing worn by the murdered citizens, i.e. Tomi re-created these garments

according to the family photos of the victims she managed to obtain. This video installation

operates precisely with the content of a political trauma. XY Ungelst in the media of

contemporary art detects the beginning of the escalation of the uncontrolled violence in SFRJ

in the end of the 80s, which ended catastrophically and left the people with unimaginable

consequences. The increasingly hostile situation in Kosovo led to one of the biggest and

longest riots in Serbia, in the winter of 1996-1997, but in the face of immanent violence, it

didnt change anything. Finally, the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 ultimately resulted in

this countrysown mini-October revolution and in an overthrown of Milosevicsrule in

2000.14

This kind of artistic practise Milica continued through the years, and it culminated

with the piece Containers, Forensic performance(re) construction of the crime, developed

from 2004 to 2011.

13During the Tito era, Kosovo was an autonomous province. When Milosevic came to power, Kosovo lost its

autonomy.14Ana Miljacki, Anti-Lobotomy: The Visible Evidence of Resistance in 1990s Belgrade, Perspecta, Vol. 34(2003), pp.94-107


6/27

6

b. Containers, Forensic Performance(Re)Construction of the Crime (2004-2011)

The crime that this project refers to, was committed in the Northern Afghanistan, in

November 2001 when thousands of Taliban war prisoners, who surrendered to the Northern

Alliance, controlled by the US Army, were loaded into the sealed truck containers. Without

any air to breathe or water to drink, they were transported through the desert on the two-to-

three-day trip to Sheberghan Prison. In the scorching heat, and fearing suffocation, the

prisoners gasped for air and screamed for water. When they started begging for air, the

Northern Alliance troops opened fire on the containers in order to make holes for the air to

get in. Those who survived were subsequently shot and buried in mass graves. The public

announcement about this massacre appeared in the media only two years later. Not a single

image of this crime appeared in the media.

The idea of the project was to produce a non-existing war image, a fictional image of

this event. The artist explains that: Thisreconstruction is about an event that is a symptom of

politics of the permanent war against terrorism. Simultaneously, I view these events as a

symptom of the regime change of what we used to call war. The war used to be defined as a

continuation of politics by other means and it was in the function of politics. That moment

when the war against terrorism was declared, it was an act that has changed the concept of

war. This new type of war introduced specific mechanisms of criminalization and it also

redefined particular ethnic groups, states and religious groups outside of the law. We stepped

into the era of a permanent war, with an open question: Who is being terrorized and who is

the terrorist?15This project is an attempt of reconstruction through an object that remembers,

in this case, a container. [Fig.3] Container is the object of globalization. The utilitarian

15Artists website:https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/container/


7/27

7

symbol of international trade and commerce is now being transformed into a sealed mass

coffin. The container provides the perfect solution to make people disappear. That is how

cheap labor workers from Mexico are smuggled across the border. There are refugees in

Belgium hidden in containers.

The container went through the reconstruction process16in Belgrade in 2004, for the

Sydney Biennial 2006, and for the 6th Gyumri International Biennial in Armenia in 2008.

Holes needed to be made on the containers by using real weapons. During the reconstruction

of this crime, it is the state that defined under which conditions it was possible to penetrate the

container. The first reconstruction took place in Belgrade in the sports club where employees

of the army and police socialized and practiced shooting. [Fig.4] There, three professional

shooters, using Kalashnikovs and special bullets, shot at the container. After this, the artist

photographed the container. And this was a turning point for the project, because the artist

then realized that by analyzing the process of the reconstruction of the crime, all the tools that

were used to reconstruct this crime point to the setting of a local participation in the system of

global network of violence. The fact that we have reconstructed the crime in the new

settings, not only did it build the network of military, economic and political relations which

are in the position to reconstruct the crime that took place in Afganistan, but what became

visibly real but subdued and unresolved during these reconstructions were the networks of

military, economic and political relations, which during the process of reconstruction

appeared active and began to tell us its own criminal story .17Repeating this reconstruction,

in different countries and states produced different scenarios.

16Always a new container

17Interview with Milica Tomic and Doreen Mende for the Centre for Research Architecture:http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20

Tomic.pdf


8/27

8

She realized that the shooters were at the same time: shooters/sportsmen, policemen

and military people. For the project it was significant to use the automatic weapons. In the

case of Serbia, they used Kalashnikovs, weapon powerful enough to endure special

ammunition. These bullets were the bullets which were produced in 1988 in the former

Yugoslavia, and have been moved to Kosovo, where they were used during the war, until

1999, when the Yugoslav Army brought them to Belgrade, following the retreat from Kosovo.

So, it seems that, during a crimes reconstruction in Belgrade, another crime became slowly

visible and fully real.

In Australia, the only professionals who accepted shooting at the container were

kangaroo hunters, so it was possible to perform the (re)construction only on the private

property, by hiring private professional forces. The bullets they were using, were the same

that were used by the Australian army in fighting the US-led war in Iraq. [Fig.5]

During the reconstructions in Guymri, in Armenia, they were faced with a total

weapon ban.


9/27

9

3. Monument building

a.

Making of an immaterial monument

One day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannot come

otherwise, (2009-2010) [Fig.6]

This is a verse from a poem of Oskar Davicho, who was a Serbian and Yugoslavian

surrealist poet and writer but also one of the fighters in the National Liberation Armywhich

was Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement during the second World War.

This work is presented as a photo and video installation, but it is actually an intervention or

series of actions that happened in the public space in Belgrade in 2009 and in Copenhagen in

2010. It is a documentation of the walking actions the artist carried out, in which Tomi

revisited forgotten sites in Belgrade and in Copenhagen, where anti-Fascist actions took place

during the IIWW. The film follows the artist walking through the streets with a machine gun

in one hand and a plastic supermarket bag in the other, passing civilians who are seemingly

untroubled by her weapon. In this project she is referring to these places as places that

remember, like she was referring to the container as the object that remembers.18During

the course of 2 months she walked through all the places where successful actions of the

Peoples Liberation Movement were carried out, mapping them in this old/new territory.

Tomis work could be viewed as a public intervention that symbolically

rebuilds a nonmaterial monument. In 2010 she executed the same action in Copenhagen,

where she visited places of the resistance during the Second World War.

18Artists website:https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/one-day-instead-of-one-nighta-burst-of-machine-gun-fire-will-flash-if-light-cannot-come-otherwise/
https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/one-day-instead-of-one-nighta-burst-of-machine-gun-fire-will-flash-if-light-cannot-come-otherwise/https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/one-day-instead-of-one-nighta-burst-of-machine-gun-fire-will-flash-if-light-cannot-come-otherwise/https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/one-day-instead-of-one-nighta-burst-of-machine-gun-fire-will-flash-if-light-cannot-come-otherwise/https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/one-day-instead-of-one-nighta-burst-of-machine-gun-fire-will-flash-if-light-cannot-come-otherwise/https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/one-day-instead-of-one-nighta-burst-of-machine-gun-fire-will-flash-if-light-cannot-come-otherwise/https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/one-day-instead-of-one-nighta-burst-of-machine-gun-fire-will-flash-if-light-cannot-come-otherwise/


10/27

10

In video action One Day as a background sound we can hear interviews with five

Partisan fighters (members of the Peoples Liberation Army men and women alike), in

which they speak about their decision to take part in the peoples liberation and antifascist

struggle in Yugoslavia. They speak about what antifascist struggle means today, in other

words, why it is off topical today. The atmosphere of apathy on the street is juxtaposed with

passionate statements and convictions expressed by real protagonists in anti-Fascist

movements. [Fig.7]

After the second World War and during the Tito era, the antifascist movement was

celebrated and highly respected and in that time there was a continuous building of the

monumental modernist pieces that commemorated the Partisan struggle, while after Milosevic

came to power, the remembrance of the antifascist struggle of this country falls into oblivion.

Still the question arises: Where are these monuments and what exactly where they

commemorating? Most of them we can call invisible monuments,because they were

usually built deep in the wilderness, far from the populated areas, so even though they were

monumental in size, in short time they became unnoticeable and forgotten. My opinion is that

the monuments were built in these remote locations partly because the partisan fighters were

guerrilla fighters, and they sought protection of the nature but also they were put so far away

from the peoplebecause the people needed to forget the atrocities they endured. They didnt

want a constant reminder every time they look out of the window. But by forgetting the

struggle they also forgot the other, heroic part that the anti-fascist movement played in the

course of the war. Gerz said: The places of remembrance are people, not monuments.19, but

how can we fight the collective amnesia of one nation?

19German artist who designed the Monument Against Fascism in Hamburg-

http://www.gerz.fr/html/main.html?art_ident=76fdb6702e151086198058d4e4b0b8fc&


11/27

11

These kind of, we could say performances or performance that she did for two

months are not dependent on the audience. During the making of this monument, during

this marking of a place that should be remembered, she is in no need of an audience or any

kind of participation. On the other hand she could fit into the borders of what Widrich

Mechthild calls a participatory monument20, because even though she is not dependent of

the audience, the spectators, the participants, they are still present. In the video One day we

see not only the artist roaming the streets but also the people, the others, who are there not by

accident but, in my opinion because they, with their unconscious participation are

emphasizing the problem this work is trying to carry out in the open. This work reveals a

terrifying apathy and the fact thatpeople dont try or even want to break a consensus, even a

potentially dangerous one. People dont want to acknowledge anti-fascism as being part of

our tradition.

This work addresses the erasure of the memory of the anti-Fascist struggle, but also

reveals its relevance to the present moment with its new forms of fascism in the social life.

Today it is easy to recognize fascism in its excessive forms, but what about the fascism that is

all around us, which cannot be easily identified at a glance, which is built into the law and the

administration? Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten our anti-fascist traditions

especially here in Belgrade. I have come to realize that we have fascism everywhere today.

Here in Serbia, in Switzerland, in Europe, and beyond. Today, you cannot create monuments

of stone or concrete anymore. Therefore, Im much more interested in living monuments that

irritate and change our memory.21

20Widrich Mechthild, Performative monuments. The rematerialisation of public art, Manchester Univ. Press,

2014. pp.10221We seem to have forgotten out anti-fascist traditions: Milica Tomic in conversation with Andreas Stadler, incatalogue of Serbia: Frequently Asked question, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, 2007


12/27

12

b. Destruction of a monument

National Pavilion, (2003) and Poslednje slovo A (Thelast letter A) (2003)

This work, along with the one after, can be perceived as a certain destruction of the

memory of a country which no longer exists, and hence, no longer has the right to be

represented and to be a part of the Venice Biennale.

National Pavilion [Fig.8]deals with the break of SFR Yugoslavia, but also I think

that it deals with the question of the paradox of national identity. In Venice, the city

authorities do not allow any kind of changes on the faade of the national pavilions. So, on the

faade of the national pavilion of Serbia we now have a constant reminder of the past, and the

artists who are representing Serbia on the Biennale are actually showing their work under the

name of the country which no longer exists.

For the Yugoslav Venice Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Milica attached 400

flashbulbs to the facade of the building, set to strobe at regular intervals. Every minute the

flashes would go on, and for a moment the pavilion disappeared in the light. Consequently, it

caused a temporaryblindness ofthe spectators, that lasted until the eye recovered. During

this interval, while the eye was recuperating, new energy was being accumulated which then

allowed flashes to go on once again, and thus again preventing the eye from seeing the

pavilion. In other words, for the viewer and his eyes, the pavilion was constantly invisible.22

These flashes dematerialise the surface of the building, reducing the architecture to a

fading memory of a non-existent country. The object of the building that was fixed in terms of

memory and in terms of history, suddenly ceases to exist in the physical world.

For me, a question remains unanswered. If it is really a destruction of a memory, a

remembrance that is fading away, why did the artist decide that the pavilion, the memory

22Artists website: https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/national-pavilion/


13/27

13

deserves to be consumed by the light? If its no longer present, if it isnon-existent, why not

make the empty space visible?

I think that through these works Milica is also trying to deal with the problematics of

her own nationality and national identity. She was born in SFR Yugoslavia, a place that now

seems like a distant memory, a myth even.

In the Poslednje slovo A (The Last Letter A)[Fig.9] which subject is also the

breakup of Yugoslavia she deals with the loss of a national identity more aggressively. In

Venice, on the facade of the, at the moment of the making of this work, Pavilion Serbia and

Montenegro, remained inscription JUGOSLAVIA in bar-relief. The space inside the letter A -

the last letter in the name of today's national pavilion Serbia, Milica Tomic took as a model

for molds from which she poured two lead objects.23

c.

Group work and a desire to make a material monument

The Monument Group (Grupa Spomenik) and Four Faces of Omarska (Cetiri Lica Omarske)

Since 2010, Milica is no longer working as an individual artist and she made a shift

from the individual artistic practice to working in a collective. She is closely connected with 2

groups which are The Monument Group and 4 Faces of Omarska.

In 2002, Milica founded (Grupa Spomenik), The Monument Group [Fig.10], which is

a collective of artists and theoreticians from Belgrade in Serbia and Tuzla in Bosnia and

Herzegovina. The main topic of the Monument Groups work is the politics of memory, and

our main working axiom24is very simple - there is no memory without politics, which means

23http://www.seecult.org/vest/jednoga-dana-milice-tomic24More about the philosophy of The Monument Group in their distributive monumenta publication with thetranscript of the talk between group members (Milica Tomic, Branimir Stojanovic and Nebojsa Milikic), named


14/27

14

that there is no memory without a political subject. If there is no political subject in our

actuality who can remember a certain emancipatory politics in the past, the only memory we

can have is just a private, or a historical, memory25. The Monument Group was formed in

response to the call by the city of Belgrade to design a memorial that was to be dedicated to

the wars that took place on former Yugoslavian soil during the 1990s. Because of the

impossibility of naming and building such a monument, they decided to create a public

monument in the media of discourse.

In 2008, the group held a performance lecture at the Renaming Machine, conference,

Station/Centre for Contemporary art in Pristina where they elucidated their approach to the

wars that happened in the nineties. They said that the main question on which their praxis is

based is: Why is a monument to the wars of the 1990s unnamable? Why has every attempt to

name the events of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia been unsuccessful? For them, the

process of monument building and the whole process of naming and re-naming the monument

or an event begins with a series of discussions in which the participants define their positions

politically and ideologically, and thus an actual body of the monument is built through this

liberating discourse.26The idea was to generate a political space in which it would be possible

to discuss the wars. Monument Group is operating in the field of art by using discourse as a

medium, and enabling and producing space where discussions about atrocities could be

possible. They have adopted Gerzs idea that a discussion can be a monument. But this

discourse was not produced from ethnic standpoints. Monument Group is one of the very few

groups that is addressing the atrocities that happened on the territory of Bosnia in the nineties.

Politics of Memory (Monument of Transformation) made for Prague Biennale of 2007.http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Politics%20of%20Memory.pdf25Interview with Milica Tomic and Doreen Mende for the Centre for Research Architecture:

http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20

Tomic.pdf26Transscript from the performance lecture held by The Monument Group in Pristina in 2008.

http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Naming_Re-naming.pdf


15/27

15

For the past couple of years, Grupa Spomenik has been exploring the issue of victims

of wars in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, paying special attention to the

victims of genocide by posing a question: What still remains after the genocide in Srebrenica?

One of the projects of The Monument Group that I would like to discuss in this paper is a

project by the name of Mathemes27of Re-Association. [Fig.11]

The group started this project for the Belgrades 49th October Salon in 2008. They

opened up a discussion about the genocide in Srebrenica, a subject about which Serbia was

and still is in total denial. The work was presented as a series of public lectures that took place

over the course of five days. In three of these lectures, the invited speakers were forensic

anthropologists, forensic archaeologists, and DNA analysts from the International

Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), a Sarajevo based global institution which presented

the chain of the identity re-association process.

The lectures of scientists engaged by ICMP were based on clarification on the two key

phases in the process of identification of victims. The title Mathemes of Re-association

refers to these two phases and to their main goal which is the politics of reconciliation. The

politics of reconciliation are reflected in the process of re-association and identification.

Through the efforts of ICMP the politics of reconciliation is erasing the political positions of

both victims and perpetrator by naming the person killed in the genocide just a missing

person. Under the title Mathemes of Re-association, they displayed the identity/case

number codes in the exhibition space.28

The problem occurs after the identification, the body goes through the process of

Islamic religious ritual in order to be buried, regardless of their religious affiliation. It is

27Definition of Matheme: http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/jacques-lacan/6-concepts-et-mathemes/28Branislav Jakovljevic, On Performance Forensics: The Political Economy of Re-enactments, inhttp://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20,31.01.2014.
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20


16/27

16

precisely this politics of re-association in terms of ethnic identity that the members of Grupa

Spomenik want to bring into question. They are trying to rupture the chain of equivalence:

killed in genocide= missing person = Moslem. The consequence of the genocide was the

rupture of all connections. So this project is also about re-associating connections between

Bosnia and Serbia.29

In 2010 Milica Tomic founded a working group Four Faces of Omarska (Cetiri lica

Omarske), which started out from the discussions in the Monument Group. Group Four Faces

of Omarska consists of people who come from different areas of expertise: art, architecture,

film, political science, law and philosophy.

The Group suggests the strategies of a memorial production which would be built by

the network of people, and by their open discourse about the four faces, four forms of

Omarska. Milica says: In my research, I will focus on how different relations and topics

experienced by people (including myself, as well as the researchers involved in this project)

who survived the Four Faces of Omarska can reproduce ways in which a work of art is

constructed.30Omarska is a small mining town in Bosnia, in the municipality of Prijedor, and

its four faces are:

1. OmarskaMine Complex during the Socialist YU

2. Omarska campa place of mass murder and torture in the nineties during the wars

in the former Yugoslavia.

3. Omarska site was used as a production area for producing the war movies and

29 Interview with Milica Tomic and Doreen Mende for the Centre for Research Architecture:

http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20Tomic.pdf30Artists website: https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/new-projects-2/#_edn1


17/27

17

finally 4. Mine complex Omarska is now owned by the multinational company

ArcelorMittal, which is the largest steel producer in the world.

Twenty-three years passed since the war crimes were committed, and Omarska is still

waiting for a memorial. The place for public commemoration of the victims doesnt exit. In

2005 ArcelorMittal made a commitment to finance and build a memorial on the grounds of

Omarska, which, until this day was not accomplished. In the whole region there is a certain

collective denial of the crimes, which only aids the hesitation of ArcelorMittal to build a

memorial.31

These Faces of Omarska, which are the subject of this endeavor are deeply connected,

arising from one another and they also talk about the break-up of Yugoslavia, the fate of its

citizens and the collapse of the Yugoslav community. It is a critique of the cultural production

in Serbia that participates in the revision, negation and erasure of historical events from the

1990s. With the direct physical presence of the Working Group on the place of terror a

current memory is being constructed which prevents forgetfulness, sacralization of the crimes

and perpetuating the policy of terror, which is the main function of this immaterial

monument.32

The work of Four Faces of Omarska introduces an important aspect, the transition

from socialism to capitalism, which began during the course of the war and is still an ongoing

process. The process of appropriating public property and public-owned property in the name

of the ideology of transition is a form of the extreme terror. It also deals with the role of

transition in the wars of the 1990s, as well as the aspect of todays revision of the 1990s

crimes committed in Bosnia, through the current situation of the Omarska mining complex:

31Susan Schuppli, A memorial in exile in Londons Olympics: orbits of responsibility, at

https://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibility32http://heartefact.org/2010/09/07/autorska-izlozba-milice-tomic-%E2%80%93-jednoga-dana/


18/27

18

the struggles and debates between those who survived the Omarska camp, the families of

the killed and missing, and the current owner of the mine in Omarskathe ArcelorMittal

Steel companywhich refuses to allow a memorial plaque to be placed on the site for the

purpose of commemorating the victims of the camp.

One of the goals of this project is to produce an active exhibition which will be used as

a site for the production of artistic interventions, lecture performances and a certain active

archive of materials that relate to this research and which will consequently be made into a

publication.33[Fig.12]

The main question that this working group is trying to answer is - How to build the

memorial there? It has to involve and make visible all the marginalized knowledge that is not

present in the main public discourse of history and the past of this area. How to build a

memorial when there is no political or economic power that supports building this monument?

How to get to that point of mutual trust between individuals and build a common ground for

this kind of memorialization of the past and recognition of the present?

33Ibid.


19/27

19

Conclusion:

Monuments must be seen to be affirmative rather than critical. They are designed to

fix history and to situate the subject of the nation within a specific narrative.34

I think that the

work of Milica Tomic is truly trying to fix the nation from within, by first acknowledging

its past, no matter how glorious or atrocious it is. Her work centers on issues of political

violence but also on nationality and identity, with particular attention to the tensions between

personal experience and media constructed images.

The only task that anartist has is to bring every circumstance, every situation into

question.35Milica Tomic in her work deals with the issue of national identity and politics of

memory, but unlike many other artists she is not using the typical codes of shock, there are no

disturbing photos or explicit content, thus the viewerscenter of attention is not positioned on

the sense of inner discomfort, but on the questions that these works raise. Milica turns herself

into a part of the scenario as to trigger a process of critical thinking and shaking off the apathy

and social amnesia. She is not trying to open old wounds of the social and political history,

she is pointing to the ones that are already there, but neglected. Also, in her work I think that

she is constantly trying to answer the question - What if I, as an artist, reclaim the right to

question the states right over narration about a crime, and, therefore, take the right to

proclaim, reflect, textualize, and determine what constitutes a crime? Who has the right to

produce narration about a crime? Why should any citizen not be entitled to this right?

34Simon Sheikh, Plans of Immanence, or the form of ideas: Notes on the (anti-)monuments of Thomas

Hirschhorn, in After all: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry, Issue 9 (Spring/Summer 2004), pp.90-9835Interview with Milica Tomic: https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/


20/27

20

Bibliography:

-

Caspersen, Nina, Belgrade, Pale, Knin: Kin-State Control over Rebellious Puppets?,

Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 59, No.4(Jun. 2007).

- Cochran, Clarke E., Joseph and the Politics of Memory, The Review of Politics, Vol.

64, No. 3 (Summer, 2002).

- Dimitrijevic, Branislav, The Grand Compromise: On examples of the Use of Political

References in Serbian Art of the 90s and its Historical Background, inStrategies of

Presentation I, 2000/2001, Svet umetnosti/World of art.

- Eric, Zoran, Art as the critical reflection of the public sphere, Bauhaus-Universitt,

2005.

- Geers, Kendell, The Work ofArt in The State of Exile, at

http://kendellgeers.com/library/texts/328

- Grzinic, Marina, Southeastern Europe and the Question of Knowledge, Capital and

Power, The Global South, Vol.5, No.1, Spring 2011

- Jakovljevic, Branislav, On Performance Forensics: The Political Economy of Re-

enactments, inhttp://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20,31.01.2014.

- Mechthild, Widrich, Performative monuments. The rematerialisation of public art,

Manchester Univ. Press, 2014.

- Milevska, Suzana, Staged (In)Visibility, inEuropean Institute for Progressive

Cultural Politics, 2005.
http://kendellgeers.com/library/texts/328http://kendellgeers.com/library/texts/328http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcaj20http://kendellgeers.com/library/texts/328


21/27

21

- Milevska, Suzana, Participatory Art: A Paradigm Shift from objects to Subjects,

Springerin.[Online], 2006.

- Milevska, Suzana, Is Balkan Art History Global? in Is Art History Global? ,

Routledge, 2013

- Miljacki, Ana, Anti-Lobotomy: The Visible Evidence of Resistance in 1990s

Belgrade,Perspecta, Vol. 34(2003).

- Musil, R., Monuments, Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, (1936)

-

Renz, Seraina, KrperGrenzen Materialitt. Die Politik der (post-)

jugoslawischen Kunst von Marina Grini /Aina mid und Milica Tomi / Grupa

Spomenik, inKunst, Krper und Politik. Body Art im Wandel der Zeit in (Ex-)

Jugoslawien, 2011.

- Schuppli, Susan, A memorial in exile in Londons Olympics: orbits of

responsibility, athttps://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-

in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibility

- Sheikh, Simon, Plans of Immanence, or the form of ideas: Notes on the (anti-

)monuments of Thomas Hirschhorn, in After all: A Journal of Art, Context, and

Enquiry, Issue 9 (Spring/Summer 2004).

- Shriver, Donald W., Making Wrong Right: Forgiveness in Politics, Institute for

Conflict Analysis and Resolution, New York, 1998.

- Stojanovic, Branislav, Politics of Memory, Group Monument, distributive object

participative monument, Prague Biennale, Prague, 2007.

- Stojanovic, Branislav, Mathemes of Reassociation, newspaper editorial board, 49th

October Salon, Belgrade, 2008.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibilityhttps://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibilityhttps://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibilityhttps://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibilityhttps://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibilityhttps://www.opendemocracy.net/susan-schuppli/memorial-in-exile-in-london%E2%80%99s-olympics-orbits-of-responsibility


22/27

22

- Verovsek, Peter, The Politics of Memory: A Conceptual Approach to the Study of

Memory in Politics, Department of Political Science, Yale University, 2012.

Videos and interviews:

- Milica Tomic, Stanford Humanities Center/SiCa Arts Writer/Practitioner in Residence

2011, discussion about the project "The Four Faces of Omarska." ,

https://vimeo.com/31114875 (video)

-

Interview with the artist, We seem to have forgotten out anti-fascist traditions: Milica

Tomic in conversation with Andreas Stadler, in catalogue of Serbia: Frequently

Asked question, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, 2007

-

Interview,https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-

neprestanog-ispitivanja/

- Interview with Milica Tomic and Doreen Mende for the Centre for Research

Architecture:

http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%

20memory,%20Milica%20Tomic.pdf

- Interview,http://www.seecult.org/vest/jednoga-dana-milice-tomic

- Ausstellungsdesign und Kuratorische Praxis

http://adkp.ruhe.ru/sites/default/files/0307.pdf

-

Publication with the transcript of the talk between group members (Milica Tomic,

Branimir Stojanovic and Nebojsa Milikic), named Politics of Memory(Monument of

Transformation) made for Prague Biennale of 2007.

http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Politics%20of%20Memory.pdf
https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20Tomic.pdfhttp://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20Tomic.pdfhttp://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20Tomic.pdfhttp://www.seecult.org/vest/jednoga-dana-milice-tomichttp://www.seecult.org/vest/jednoga-dana-milice-tomichttp://www.seecult.org/vest/jednoga-dana-milice-tomichttp://adkp.ruhe.ru/sites/default/files/0307.pdfhttp://adkp.ruhe.ru/sites/default/files/0307.pdfhttp://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Politics%20of%20Memory.pdfhttp://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Politics%20of%20Memory.pdfhttp://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Politics%20of%20Memory.pdfhttp://adkp.ruhe.ru/sites/default/files/0307.pdfhttp://www.seecult.org/vest/jednoga-dana-milice-tomichttp://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20Tomic.pdfhttp://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Displayer,%20Politics%20of%20memory,%20Milica%20Tomic.pdfhttps://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/https://qcdnevnik.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/milica-tomic-vreme-neprestanog-ispitivanja/


23/27

23

- Transcript from the performance lecture held by The Monument Group in Pristina in

2008. http://roundtable.kein.org/sites/newtable.kein.org/files/Naming_Re-naming.pdf

Artists website:

- https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/container/
https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/container/https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/container/https://milicatomic.wordpress.com/works/container/


24/27

24

Appendix:

1.

XY UNGELOST the reconstruction of a

crime, 1996-1997

3. Containers, Forensic Performance(Re)Construction of the Crime, 2004-2011

4. Containers, Forensic Performance(Re)Construction of the Crime, 2004-

2011. Container in Belgrade.

2.

XY UNGELOST the reconstruction of a

crime (the artist wearing reconstructed

clothes from one of the murdered

Albanians), 1996-1997


25/27

25

5. Containers, Forensic Performance(Re)Construction of the Crime, 2004-2011.Container in Australia

6. One day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannotcome otherwise, 2009-2010


26/27

26

7. One day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannotcome otherwise, 2009-2010.

8. National Pavilion, 2003. 9. The Last Letter A, 2003.


27/27

10.

The Monument Group 11.

The Monument Group, Mathemes of Re-

Association, 2008

12.

Working Group Four Faces of Omarska, Wall notes of public working meeting, 2010

Milica Tomic: "The Art of Remembrance"

Documents

Transcript of Milica Tomic: "The Art of Remembrance"