July 32 (2019 - 2020)

While growing up, I listened to the stories of my grandparents about the places where they were born and from which they came to Novi Sad. As an adult, I always wanted to see those places to somehow demythologize them, because as a child I imagined them as surreal, almost magical. During 2019 and 2020, I visited the places where they were born, which are located in four different parts of the former Yugoslavia - Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo. After being abandoned for various reasons, the houses where they grew up were left to time and oblivion. Some remained in their places, some were replaced by others - foreign and newer ones, and those that collapsed simply disappeared. The places where those former homes were are now meadows and forests, which is why it was very difficult to precisely locate them.

The only directions to their birth houses were those my grandparents wrote based solely on their memories. Upon my arrival at their places of departure, the discontinuity between the real state of the place and the one that lives in their memory was apparent. Thus, I found myself in a space that exists on the edge of memory and oblivion.

 

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From the poplar tree on the right, up the road
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On the right side of the house a stream and a plum tree, and on the left a corn field
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From the school ahead, the zigzag road in one direction, all the way to the top of the mountain
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A house built of brick, and between the brick a wooden beam and a wooden fence
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There’s a small stream
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Behind the house a stream, and the house across the post office, diagonally from a church, about 15 meters up the hill
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From the school ahead, the zigzag road in one direction, all the way to the top of the mountain
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There is a hill and a road, and on the side, the house with a small wooden roof
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A place for a photograph

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