Locating Remote Proximities: Documenting Yugoslav Socialist Memorial Heritage

In the summer of 2016, I set out on a solo researchtrip to document Partisan memorials in the territoryof former Yugoslavia. This iteration of the fieldworkwould last for six weeks as compared to the initialten-day-long trip taken in 2013 (and the recentlycompleted four-week long journey made in July2017). In the months leading up to the fieldwork,I researched each of the 28 memorials, locating,mapping and planning routes between sites, townsand cities across Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Slovenia. During this time, I drove4,853 kilometers across the five countries.Sited in former Yugoslavia, this project situates itselfbetween a particular point of time in history whenthe state of Yugoslavia existed and these memorialscame into being and their current plight in today’spost-Yugoslav context. These memorial sites areat odds with the nationalist and revisionist ideologiesincreasingly present in the region and subjectto the myriad collective memories of people livingin the countries of former Yugoslavia. The inspirationfor this paper came from the many ways thatnotions of the proximate and remote slip back andforth geographically, conceptually, and politicallyin this project. Rather than focus solely on researchoutcomes, I aim to discuss the tools and techniquesemployed to render remote sites of study visible.

Volume Editors
Urs Peter Flueckiger & Victoria McReynolds

ISBN
978-1-944214-16-6