The Fragile Art of Living Together

In Sarajevo vlog, I interviewed colleagues and friends–mostly musicians living in or somehow connected to Bosnia and Herzegovina–reflecting on cooperation and multiculturality as the essential way to live, create, exist. What in Bosnia and Herzegovina feels natural and self-evident often requires explanation and theories elsewhere. Camera work was done in collaboration with my friends Aida Adžović and Yeonju Jeong, with video editing by Mohamed Hadžović. Music credits go also to Ališer Sijarić, Cunami Flo, ensemble Etnoakademik, Dino Rešidbegović, Totalna Rasprodaja.

A set of four interviews exploring the continuity between the political climate of the 1990s and today’s unrest in Serbia. Two interviews feature people who were in their twenties during the wars of the nineties, reflecting on mobilization and the anti-war resistance. The other two feature students currently in their twenties, speaking from within today’s political struggle. Together, they draw a line between past and present, showing how the experiences of the nineties echo in the current wave of student protests.

This video features conversations with my parents and my husband. They have all experienced some form of war and share very fragile topics. The video includes private family archival footage from my parents, from before the war and clips of the band »Most« from Mostar, in which my father played solo guitar.

The video intertwines three conversations with distinguished Slovenian academics, each offering a distinct lens on the conditions of creative freedom–past and present. Through their experiences as artists, researchers, and cultural witnesses, they show that freedom is never abstract: it is shaped by institutions, expectations, private convictions, the courage to stand apart, and by how a society treats its minorities. A particular focus emerges around the position of women in creative sector–not as theory, but as lived reality. The work invites viewers to reflect on how history persists in the present, how creativity responds to pressure, and how freedom–social, artistic, personal–must be continually reexamined and defended. How do we learn to listen again? To others, to art, and to ourselves. Art may not change the world, but it preserves a space where truth has not yet become cynical–where freedom is measured not by volume, but by the fragile flow between us.

with

Uroš Rojko, composer, clarinetist, long-time professor of composition at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU)

Naško Križnar, PhDethnologist, visual anthropologist, filmmaker and member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU)

Larisa Vrhunc, PhD, composer and professor at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

Interview by Petra Strahovnik

Filmed and edited by Vida Habjanič

Sound editing by Ernest Fejzić

While preparing for these interviews, many people refused to take part in the project. Those who agreed to participate insisted on remaining anonymous. This phenomenon made me decide to explore why people want to remain anonymous, which led me to include a psychologist in the interviews, who explains in more detail terms such as »the culture of silence,« transgenerational trauma, 2nd-hand trauma, and trauma in general in post-war country. I was also struck by the consistently non-emotional way of speaking among participants, and these interviews offered insight into the many ways in which war can affect people.