zagreb - berlin 1968 / berlin - london 2009

My time as a guest artist and (in a way) a guest worker in Berlin drew close too quickly. As it is often the case, things start unraveling as the time is getting tighter, perhaps this happens because of the knowledge that time is running out. And so it was that my last week of residency was filled with many meetings and interviews, which I have only now begun to process. As I listen over the recordings of interviews in my studio in London, I feel a great urge to turn these personal stories into histories and histories into stories…

I met Ana just a few days before my impending trip back to London, and she showed me a note she kept all these years: it was from the bureau of employment letting her know that she will travel (to Berlin) on the 12th July 1968, and to be in front of JAT’s building in Zagreb (Yugoslav Airline Company/Jugoslavenski Avio Transport) at 3pm.




As I process the material gathered in Berlin and further work on the project I will continue writing and posting in this transitional blogospheric space where thoughts move from the personal to the public. In this space, I hope to develop the blog as a resource, a reflection space and a form of an archive. And in the process of piecing the personal stories with the historical, political and social narratives of the time, I hope in some way to capture the place and the time, so that it can tell its stories...