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Disappearing Absence: Retirement Home Mirrors Decay of Society in the Process of a Post-War Reconstruction




TekijätCatovic Hughes, Selma

ToimittajaCharlie Jorge

PainosFirst edition

Julkaisuvuosi2024

Kokoomateoksen nimiUncanny Horizons: Explorations of the “Unheimlich” in Literature, Film and Aesthetics

Aloitussivu134

Lopetussivu149

ISBN978-1-73955-976-2


Tiivistelmä

During the early 1990s, Bosnia and Herzegovina had been entangled in war atrocities, not only losing thousands of lives and displacing even more, but also suffering substantial physical destruction of cities, infrastructure and landscape. Almost three decades later, the post-war reconstruction of damaged buildings in Sarajevo has been nearly completed and visible scars as evidence of a four-year conflict are inconspicuous…except for the overgrown ruins which used to be the Home for the Pensioners. Quaint and whimsical homes in pink, yellow, and green initially symbolized happiness and celebration of life, but in the years that followed its destruction, the Home for the Pensioners became an undeniable reminder of war, decay and loss. Retirement complex, an inevitable episode of human decline through aging, embodies literal material deterioration of bombed out buildings and simultaneously mirrors decay of society in a post-conflict country. How can we preserve fragments of history and its meaningful scars to, if nothing else, coexist with new foreign investor-funded developments and troubled post-war society injected with a strong dose of consumerism? As corruption and political games have delayed any chance for reconstruction, these abandoned colorful fragments, overgrown with weeds and surrounded with new shopping centers and hotels, are frozen in time and serve as a lonely symbol of resistance to strong values of society it once exemplified and a shameful decaying process of tangled histories. Although the urban fabric of Sarajevo has been changed with the post-war rehabilitation, abandoned ruins, like the retirement complex, are strong reminders of recent difficult history.  These collections of disappearing absences in the city are direct reflections of decaying society, which is resisting simultaneously its past and new changes.



Last updated on 2025-27-01 at 19:50