kuća / kući (working title)
house / home
Haus / nach Hause
(installation, film, photography)
this project is focusing on our journey to Austria in 1992, reflecting our individual family history, which is embedded in collective migration processes. In the first years, we were hosted as refugees by three families in Austria. We lived in foreign houses while our own unfinished house in Bosnia at first was inhabited by soldiers, then by refugee families from other Balkan regions, so called internally displaced persons.
the house, amongst other „newly“ built houses of that area is characterized by orange and blue brick walls which I dimly remember going up all around at this place. Most of those buildings remain unfinished and seem to me like memorials or monuments, new constructions at the same time ruins, symbolizing the collapse of Yugoslavia and the waves of migration that followed in its wake.
at the third photograph (2019) shows the north facade of our house in Bosnia, which we left unfinished. Since 2011, work has been taking place periodically to finish it. The picture-in-picture is the recently installed window reflecting the surrounding view. The bottom part of the reflection shows the dike, protecting the area from the river Sava. Above the dike you can see the autumn trees across the river. They grow on the Croatian side, now one of the European Union’s external borders.
as a part of the project itself, we visited the families we used to live with, not only to reconnect with them, but also to take video and photo footage of their houses and the adjacent areas.
Amongst others, those Images and videos were projected. the installation process was being recorded.
(Images: medium format photography+film stills, Gradiška 2019)
the house in 2016