Exhibition Celebrates the Reopening of Sarajevo’s Library - The Damnation of Memory - Do Not Forget, Remember and Warn!

Sarajevo's Library/Miriam Nabarro

I came across the work of the wonderful Miriam Nabarro while doing a piece on War Correspondents for the Economist's Prospero blog, a song theatre show on foreign correspondents. Nabarro, who has worked in conflict zones for many years, designed the show and helped interview the correspondents.

Looking at her website, I was amazed at the scope of her work (theatre design, photography, printmaking and textiles) at a still relatively young age. Her work has taken her to Iran, Australia, Sudan, Kosova, Eritrea and the DRC, where she has created performances, exhibitions and installations in theatres, football pitches, churches and factories, with national theatres, artists, street children and people of all ages.

I was excited when she mentioned her new project: The Damnation of Memory - Do Not Forget, Remember and Warn!, an exhibition celebrating the reopening of Sarajevo’s iconic war-bombed library. For the show, Nabarro experimented printing square, black-and-white images she shot with her old Hasselblad camera onto glass with liquid emulsion to create a fragile, ghostlike feeling.  She produced nine dreamy plates, which seem to whisper stories of 'before', of the library's savage destruction, but also of resilience and hope.

I love them, so was disappointed when a piece I wrote for the Times about her exhibition failed to feature her work because the editor believed the black-and-white images would not reproduce well.

As there are only a few days left to view this beautiful, evocative exhibition, I wanted to show some her images here, along with the unedited piece I wrote for the Times. The Damnation of Memory - Do Not Forget, Remember and Warn!, is showing at the School of Oriental and African Studies  (SOAS) in London until September 5.  Go see it, if you have a chance.

Sarajevo's Library/Miriam Nabarro

 

-->

The Damnation of Memory - Do Not Forget, Remember and Warn! – An exhibition celebrating the reopening of Sarajevo’s iconic war-bombed library.

A plaque at the entrance of Vijećnica, Sarajevo’s recently reopened iconic war-bombed national library, reads:

'On this place.... Serbian criminals in the Night of 25-26th August 1992 set on fire the National and University's Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over 2 Millions of Books, Periodicals and Documents Vanished in the Flames
                  Do Not Forget, Remember and Warn!'

The destruction of Vijećnica was one of the most devastating acts of the 1992 Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo and became its symbol.  Nearly 90 per cent of the library’s collections vanished in black smoke, which hung over the city for three days. “Set free from the stacks, characters wandered the streets, mingling with passers-by and the souls of dead soldiers,” wrote the Bosnian poet Goran Simic in his 1993 Lament for Vijecnica.

The Damnation of Memory - Do Not Forget, Remember and Warn!, an exhibition of photographs celebrating the reopening of Sarajevo’s library after 22 years, is showing at the School of Oriental and African Studies  (SOAS) in London until September 5.  Vijecnica was restored to mark the centenary of WW1, which was triggered by the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He was shot as he left the building, which was at the time City Hall.

“Anyone you mention the library to has a story,” says Miriam Nabarro, the first Artist in Residence in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, who photographed the library under reconstruction in 2006 and again in 2012.  She was told stories about the time “before”, about the library’s multicultural atmosphere and its magical books; stories about their destruction and how Sarajevans formed a human chain to try to save as many books as possible; and stories about Vedran Smailovic, who played  his cello for 22 days in the burned down library in defiance of the snipers and shelling. 

Nabarro, a theatre designer and photographer, first shot a series of images on a Leica camera in 2006, but they seemed too “journalistic” to reflect the depth of emotions and stories the building evoked. 

Sarajevo's Library/Miriam Nabarro

“Walking through the partially restored shell of the building, you could still see the charcoaled marks of burnt books on the stucco walls, bits of carved graffiti post catastrophe asking for Mir (Peace) and favorite quotes and authors.”

Nabarro wanted her work to respond to the building and its history rather than merely recording its reconstruction, so she returned to Sarajevo in 2012, this time with her Hasselblad, an old-fashioned medium format film camera.  (She had used the same camera to shoot Hidden Corners, her behind-the-scene photographs of the National Theatre in 2010).   She then experimented printing the Hasselblad square, black-and-white images onto glass with liquid emulsion to create a fragile, ghostlike feeling.  

“I work this process very quickly, coating the glass with a gelatin solution, then melting the emulsion in the darkroom, applying it wet to the glass plate, exposing it immediately and then straight into the developer/ stop/fix. It has taken a while to perfect the technique, or rather, to learn about its eccentricities enough to manage the outcomes... but somehow this felt like the perfect medium to evoke the feeling of loss and memory, and also of hope that the architecture of the library gives.”   

To enhance the dreaminess of the plates and let the viewer’s mind wander between the library’s past and future, she suspended her work from the wall by mild steel rods. This allows the light in behind the images and causes them to appear as if they are floating.

The result is a sensitive, evocative and very moving exhibition. There are only nine plates, as well as a beautiful handmade book, but they leave a deep impression. And they seem to echo destruction and hope in other places and times.

The Damnation of Memory is at the Wolfson Gallery in School of Oriental and African Studies  (SOAS) University Library until September 5. 

Sarajevo's Library/Miriam Nabarro

War Correspondents

Rebecca Thorn and Oliver Senton/credit: Simon Richardson

--> The dangers of life as a war reporter are horribly familiar. Only last week, the front page of the Times showed the bloodied face of Anthony Loyd, a British reporter shot twice by Syrian rebels who were holding him hostage. According to Reporters Without Borders,  18 journalists have been killed and 173 imprisoned since the beginning of this year alone.


With journalists currently reporting on conflicts in countries such as Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Central African Republic, this is certainly an interesting time for the launch of a new theatrical work that examines the conditions of their employment. I always find it very interesting to see how artists convey and translate serious and difficult issues. And how they manage to make us understand them on a different level, touching us beyond words. 


“War Correspondents” is a 75-minute show that tells the stories of five foreign correspondents, three men and two women - representing the many who take great risks to report on conflicts across the world.  Using a capella songs and choreographed movement, interspersed with poems and extracts of interviews, it tries to bring to life the fear, moral dilemmas, pain, thrill, courage and frustrations that characterise this particular form of journalism. 


The show is the second “song theatre performance” created by Helen Chadwick, a composer, and Steven Hoggett, an Olivier-Award-winning choreographer. The idea emerged from an encounter between Chadwick and Jon Spaul, a photographer who worked on the first Chechen war in the 1990s. “He showed me his devastating photos and told me about what was happening to him and other photographers working there,” she says. “He was just a normal bloke doing extraordinary work. That inspired me.”


Chadwick and Miriam Nabarro, the show's designer, who has worked extensively in conflict zones, spent six years interviewing war correspondents with experience of reporting in Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere. Their subjects included Martin Bell, a renowned former correspondent with the BBC, and Giuliana Sgrena, who was taken hostage in Fallujah, Iraq, and subsequently shot at by the American army on her way to the airport.


They started with general questions, and from the answers saw themes emerge that could be used to shape the show: danger, the reason for the correspondents’ choice of work, its impact on their lives, censorship, changes to the job since 9/11 and others.


Chadwick wrote 30 songs based mostly on the testimonies, but also some poems by Brecht, Saadi Yousef and Mansur Muhammad Ahmad Rajih. Hoggett then choreographed accompanying dances. 


Both songs and dances are performed by just five actors, and the result is exquisite, with the music preventing the whole performance from veering too much into the earnest and the sombre. 


Of the many issues examined, the most moving concerns what journalists are supposed to do about the suffering they witness and the guilt they feel when leaving it behind at the end of their assignments. One is surprised that years of covering conflicts have made him “battle-softened” rather than “battle-hardened”. Another comments, “Wars, disasters… they all live inside me. I cannot get rid of them.”


"War Correspondents" is touring around Britain until October 25th.

You can read my review for the Economist’ Prospero blog here.