LAUNCH OF THE ARchipelago PROJECT AND APP

17:00 – 18.30

Intro: ARchipelago – a site-specific archival platform for public space

18.30 – 19:00

Coffee break

19:00 – 20:00

CZKD on the General Staff building in the context of ARchipelago.

The main case study of the Belgrade part of the ARchipelago project – the General Staff – remains deeply intertwined with ideology, politics, war, nation-state, and more recently profit. Consisting of two buildings separated by Nemanjina Street, the General Staff is considered an important architectural landmark, as the architect Nikola Dobrović’s only completed Belgrade project. It was built between 1954 and 1965 in socialist Yugoslavia, replacing the premises of the Ministry of Defense and the Military Academy, heavily damaged in the 1941 bombardment. Dobrović’s buildings were hit in the 1999 NATO intervention — one of them sustaining more damage than the other. They were subsequently protected as cultural monuments, in an attempt to emphasize the importance of their reconstruction as prime examples of post-WWII modernist Yugoslav architecture.

Due to its history as a seat of the Yugoslav and later Serbian military forces, the General Staff remains a highly symbolic and affectively charged place. Not only that it’s by no means neutral or innocent — its relation to memory and remembrance is complex and multilayered — but its continuous exploitation as an object of self-victimizing nationalistic discourse further impedes a social consensus on the role of the Serbian state and its army in the wars of the 1990s.

20:00 – 21:00

Bengi Muzbeg (Lumbardhi Foundation) and Nafis Lokvica (Naci & Nafis Lokvica collection) on ARchipelago’s Kosovo case study

In Prizren, the sense of unity in social life began to erode amidst the adverse political atmosphere from 1990, when Kosovo’s autonomy was revoked, until the war in 1999. Visual materials capturing everyday life practices during the 1990s, including the NATO intervention in 1999, are preserved in the Naci & Nafis Lokvica Collection, which is at the core of ARchipelago’s approach in Prizren.

Archival Holdings, Prizren
Naci & Nafis Lokvica Collection. Commencing in 1975, the collection of the Naci and Nafis Lokvica brothers documents rituals, cultural, and artistic activities during the 1990s. This collection provides a firsthand account of the war in 1999 and the tensions experienced in its aftermath. Alongside details of daily life, the collection encompasses the architectural transformations in Prizren, rituals, social events, and cultural activities, offering a comprehensive view of the city’s evolution.