The Un-War Space Installation

In her research, Un-war Space—on the entanglements of war and un-war spaces, Armina Pilav refuses to give a single idea on the “destructive metamorphosis” (Zoran Doršner, 1994) of the city of Sarajevo, which was under siege from 1992 to ‘96. Instead, she gives us a performing archive in the form of a compressed, specially designed exhibition device. The device acts as a thinking-in-progress machine that bears witness to how citizens, through spatial (re)actions and (re) usage of available architectural and non-architectural materials, were undoing the war in Sarajevo. The archive contains video and sound documentation, photos and architectural drawings and the Un-war Lexicon. But it is purposely left unfinished, so it can receive ongoing and new testimonies, and politically position the necessity of collective (re)thinking of the war in Sarajevo, or any other violent conflict in the world.