Belgrade Log (BG:LOG): Democratising Urban Heritage Through Participatory Mapping

MILIĆ1

BG:LOG exemplifies the importance of digital heritage praxes being grounded in local, vernacular knowledge in order to understand processes of placemaking. Delivered by the NGO, Kulturklammer, the project consisted of participatory art and design workshops where Belgraders shared memories of their city online, reflecting on their lived experiences of place. They sought to escape traditional representations of the Serbian Capital associated with the wars in the 1990s, by digitally re-assembling the city in accordance with their subjectivities.

Thus, BG:LOG is an online archive of Belgrade, generated through residents’ personal and communal narratives and visual artefacts. The project aimed to highlight the significance of public reminiscence, collective memory, and intergenerational exchange in fostering community spirit and musings about place.

Tension over the authority of Belgrade’s account as place emerged between the long memories of its older residents, versus newer depictions provided by migrants and young people. This provoked questions concerning storage and transmission of the past, explored both within the project itself and in this chapter.