The Past is Another Country

A presentation at the online symposium Post-Traumatic Landscapes, organised by the University of Sheffield and Museums Sheffield, exploring the legacy of trauma in the landscape. My presentation examines several of my projects - With the Sky on Their Shoulders, Up in Arms, The Past Is Another Country, After Tito Tito and Who Come To Stand - that in different ways engage the material histories of a place that is no more – Yugoslavia, a country I was born in, which ceased to exist some 30 years ago. These works all stage an encounter with residues of the socialist era in the form of images or artefacts to point to the violence inherent in the processes of repositioning and adjusting (identity, belonging, one’s relation to the world, to oneself and others) which is brought about by sweeping societal changes.