Installation, video-monitors, random generator, archival video footage

Sjećaš li se Sarajeva (Do you remember Sarajevo) – Multitude is an experimental spatial setup to let the Library Hamdija Kreševljaković Video Arhiv Sarajevo speak for itself. The Video Arhiv is a private collection of amateur videos filmed by a group of friends between 1992 and 1996 in besieged Sarajevo. The Video Arhiv was community driven and collected a diversity of individual perspectives. Recurring viewings, in which randomly picked videos were watched and discussed, were as important as filming and collecting the footage.

Sjećaš li se Sarajeva – Multitude translates this archival forum to the gallery space and invites visitors to encounter its raw material in a spatial arrangement. There are three different types of material: amateur documentaries, local broadcasts, and artistic films. A random generator continually selects videos by chance, while ensuring that material from each of the different collection strands are presented concurrently on the three monitors. A reset button allows visitors to restart the selection process at any time.

Thirty years after the beginning of the Bosnian War, the material of the Library Hamdija Kreševljaković Video Arhiv has outgrown its authorship and taken on a life of its own. New political urgencies arise from questions of self-representation, historical revisionism and the relativisation of violence not only in the region of former Yugoslavia but also beyond.

• Sektion Section: Exhibition
• Programm Programme: Trembling Time