zlatkokopljar.com
On the 23rd of January 2020, I became familiar with the work of Zlatko Kopljar during my visit in a retrospective exhibition of his life’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU) in Zagreb, Croatia. I came across a profound way of expressing the past, personal thoughts and emotions, and a social critic that is not localized, but generalized as it is has the potential to affect and problematize current issues of the modern world.
In this paper, at first I will focus on some specific artworks of the Croatian artist Zlatko Kopljar and his way of expressing his stance through installations. Having as analytical examples Κ6 and K19 I will argue whether the latter should be or not a relevant addition to the Jasenovac Memorial Center in Croatia, after a historical review both of the Jasenovac Concentration Camp and Center, depicting the decision making of both the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia and the modern state of Croatia regarding the construction of a Memorial center in that location.
Born in 1962 in the Bosnian town of Zenica, the mid period of Yugoslavia, which someone could argue that was the State’s pick, Zlatko Kopljar was a mature person and a young artist by the time of the eventual dissolution, commonly known “The BreakUp of Yugoslavia”, and was affected by it both on a personal and an artistic level. It might be unfair, however, to make a distinction between the artist-person and the artwork. In his performative work the sole protagonist is Kopljar, who acts or sometimes stays still waiting, focusing on the idea of the piece, projecting his body and character as the artistic medium or canvas on which and through which the message, the idea or the “Construction” can come into existence.
During my visit in the museum I had the opportunity to view the majority of his work beginning from the “Sacrifice” (1992) all the way until his most resent “Random Empty” (2017). In his early works, he experimented with photography and performance such as the series of black and white photos of him repeatedly washing his face in an attempt to be cleansed and wash off the sins with this sacrificial water. He was wondering about the power of the sin combined with the effort it takes for one to purify, resembling an overall biblical scenery despite the plane white background of the frame. Moreover, already in the beginning of the carrier, he established a way of expressing which can be described as showing by doing, using the performative medium of the body in its materiality and social existence in order to act. In the “Love Shot” (1996) he simply wrote on a bullet the word Love in Croatian, English and Latin, went to the wooded hills near Zagreb and gave a blind shot with it hoping as he said for the bullet to “drop on a fertile soil and sprout”. We should mention the importance of the selected time, 1996, a year after the end of the Homeland War, as it is called in Croatia, or the Yugoslav War, as it is internationally most commonly referred to. After 4 years filled with separation, atrocities and war crimes a Croatian Artist uses a gun, the means of war, to propel a bullet, like the millions used to kill soldiers and civilians, in order to bring love and the continuance peace to a nation tormented by the fight with the literal neighbour.
Most of the exhibits had a deep impact on me, showing the effect of the multimedial and polyscopic approach to the subjects they touch upon, but I would like to focus my interest in two artworks related to Croatian history, one being personal to the artist and the second impersonal but equally important, these being K6 (2000) and K19 (2014) respectively.
Before I get started I should note that K, found all over his artworks with numerical order since 1997, comes from the Croatian word “Konstrukcija” (construction). Construction can be considered a performance recorded in a medium that is not defined by the temporarily of live action. To perform is to act and involve your self in a discussion with your audience that are here and now. To construct, even by simply recording via video, photographs or otherwise, takes away the element of time and space, of the situational, and can embrace the potentiality of the everlasting and eversignalising object, concept or idea. Kopljar does not avoid to involve himself in these constructions, being at times both the transmitter and the receiving end of the message. To put it simply, he is in the forth-front of his creations.
K6 (2000)
Starting of with K6, I would like to note the simplicity of its form. It is a white square in the side of a country road in Bosnia with the number 23091992 written on its one side. In a short text accompanying the photo in the museum it becomes clear to the public that this is the very spot that his father got killed on the 23rd of September 1992 by a bomb. The interesting aspect of this piece, at least to me, is to be found on the duality that depicts.
On the one hand, the artists honours his father by specifying his place of death, creating a memorial site in the land, giving a material aspect to his death, such as a tomb stone above his grave. It is a personal affair, a grieving moment that affected only his own family. On the other hand, we could generalize and consider how many white squares could fill the ground, the roads, the fields and rivers where humans became bodies and people became space. We could see death in its spacial dimension, the death of one person, but also the death of many. How many civilians and soldiers died, or to be more accurate were killed during the 4 years of the war. Here we have the example of one father who left a son behind, such as many more. The absolution of testimony could be found in a simple square and a number because they become the objective tangible borders of a body signalizing a whole social upheaval. In a sense Kopljar created a lieu de mémoire, (Nora :1992) a “mnemonic space” that stands for his loss but also for the loss of many others in this social interval that he lived through.
K19 ( 2014)
Having discussed an artwork with a very personal connotation to the life of the artist I would like to move to the second example that is much more impersonal, in the sense that he is not directly involved in it, like in the previous case, yet it had affected the lives of thousands. K19 launched, I should say, in the 27 of January 2014 for 3 weeks in a central square in the capital of Croatia, called the Square of the Victims of Fascism, a place of great historical significance.
I suggest that we should first focus on the selected date and site, which assist the monument with their significance. First of all, January 27 is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day as it was decided at a conference on the same date at Stockholm in 2000, organized by the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance (ITF / Sweden:1998). The Cooperation urged the country-members to implement this decision. The United Nations General Assembly on 1 November 2005 also designated that day for the Holocaust Remembrance. On this date Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in occupied Poland was liberated by the Russian Red Army. This square, moreover, was the view of many state officials during the regime, where they performed their state duties in the Gestapo and the Ustaša Surveillance Center (UNS-Ustaška nadzorna služba ), by daily torturing and even murdering the odds of the population, based on their standards and criteria.
K19 was a series of brick pillars. As the artist revealed these were made by the hands of the Serbian-Roma-Jew prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp established by the Croatian Nazi regime of Ustaša during the brief period of existence of the puppet state of NDH ( Nazavisna Država Hrvatska- Independent State of Croatia/ 1941-45) governed with absolute power by Ante Pavelić. Yet again I am interested in the story beyond the brick structure focusing on the bricks themselves.
Of course it is clear to state that the aim of this labour was anything but artistic or aesthetic. People were forced to make them brick by brick for hours unfed to be used later as constructing material for the new state, but most importantly to exhaust the spirit and body of the inmates. Civilians in the modern state of Croatia (1991- ) had to come face to face with a living relic of the past that its physical existence could not any more silence the historical period of an other turbulent time in the Croatian history. This tet a tet confrontation of the “Distant Other” now takes place in the heart of the capital and not in a rural area near the borders. The selection of the material along with the shape and size of the constructions that surrounded the cyclical square, creating a sense of uneaseness to the spectator, could only give a minor glimpse to the situation of thousands of prisoners only 50 years ago in a location with near proximity to Zagreb, that still is very well hidden from the common eye.
What Kopljar may had intended to put forth was the similarity of a concentration camp full with individuals in a very tight space one on top of each other aimlessly being there to the brick structures in the small space of the well defined square, giving the artwork an allegoric aspect, unfolding a history, a distant memory in front of everyone's eyes, finally revoking their collective memory. Whatever his actual intention was, it seems that the beginning of a clear open dialogue and retrospection of the past is intended.
Also, it is important to note that this artwork was funded by various ambassador-organizations of the populations inside the camp. Namely, they where the Serb National Council, the Jewish Community of Zagreb, the Roma Community, the Jasenovac Memorial Site, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Education, Culture and Sports (City of Zagreb). Keeping in mind that every side and entity can have a different narrative about past events, this cooperation could also be used as a symbol of acknowledging the shared history and be an attempt to reconcile with it. By establishing an artwork, open to all sorts of readings, understandings and perceptions in the public sphere a healing process can begin, due to the conscious or unconscious confrontation with it.
In the same manner as before, we could understand the will of Kopljar to put forth an issue by addressing it raw and directly. As Adorno famously argued, after Auschwitz it is impossible to write poetry. Yet Kopljar manages to create a prose so poetic and allegoric not using a single word. He does not choose to represent, but present the very bricks and build them towards the sky in a location that has an actual importance to the artwork.
One last feature of this installation that caught my attention and I wish to briefly discuss is the re-use of the brick. After the regime fell and Jasenovac closed down in the end of the war, the remaining bricks, along with the ruins of the camp, were used by the local population who lived around it in order to construct or repair their own homes, decontexualised by the burden of the past. This point shows the durability of materiality in the physical essence of the object that by losing its original meaning became a free constructing material used by people for their own means. Yet again, the original story of the object lays there restless, waiting to be rediscovered or projected once more.
In the anthropological work of Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff, contributing to the volume “Social Life of Things” (1986), we come to understand that objects, such as the bricks in question are not merely constructed to serve one purpose and mean one specific thing. These scholars, following the long tradition of material culture studies suggest that objects have a social life or a biography like humans do, yet significantly different. Even though they are created and eventually destroyed, their chronicallity can surpass a human life and their use or significance can vary from time to time and society according to the current social and political situation or even norm.
Following the lives of these bricks at first we can see that they were the means of oppression and exhaustion of humans by others. When Partisans became victors in 1945 and socialist Yugoslavia had started to settle down, they became the means to support the rebuilding of the surrounding Croatian homes destroyed or damaged in the war. Moving on in history, 50 years later, not knowing where they were in the meantime, we can see them being used by an artist in a specific time and place, achieving an artistic value in the contemporary society and be viewed as such. Real bricks, yet contextualized as a contemporary artwork. Almost 6 years after the original installation, a single pillar is hosted in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Zagreb, leaving the rest of the bricks in an unknown resting location. Finally, in the future they may even return to their original location as an artwork. So, what we come to understand is that the “essence” (having no intention to be metaphysical) of these bricks can be found in their life long journey and in the way people use them, if not manipulate them, in different situations. This process is rather unending and ever-changing, building up their meaning a little bit each time.
Thus, what I would like to point out is that K19 is not a clear, virgin, entity that exist solely in a reflection of and relation to a long forgotten past. The presence of the bricks, in other words their actuality, is of the utmost importance to the piece and completes the symbolic notion of the projected installation.
K19 and Jasenovac
In the past there was a discussion in the Croatian art world whether K19 would or should be part of the permanent exhibition in the Jasenovac Memorial Site, situated in the very location where a concentration camp existed until 1945. I shall not attempt to give a definite answer to this discussion, to be affirmative or otherwise, but by briefly exploring the history of the Site, both as a Camp and a Museum, I hope to understand the relevance of the pillars, as an artwork, to be exhibited in this specific place of memory.
During World War II the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was geographically divided by Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and was controlled by them while there were domestic collaboration regimes. Three opposing forces that were claiming the power inside finally managed to dissolve the kingdom, based on very different ideologies. First, were the Partisans, led by Tito, who influenced by the communist Soviet Russian Federation wanted to establish a similar federation based on the principles given by Marx and Lenin by gathering wide a front of popular antifascist resistance and were victorious as part of Anti-Nazi Coalition. On the other hand, Ante Pavelić was the leader of the Ustaša movement, that was ideologically aligned with Hitler’s Nazi Germany and desired the creation of the first independent state of Croatia based on the Aryan principles. The ideological background of this movement was not recent, or unique in Europe. In the case of Croatia, these nationalistic tendencies could be seen as far as when it used to be a part of Hungarian rule in the Austo-Hungarian Empire. The third group were the Četniks, which devoted to the king were mostly Serbian nationalists and wanted to restore the balance in the Kingdom having as leader of the movement the general Draža Mihailović. We should also point out that while on the beginning of the war they were against Nazis, finally they joined them as collaborators in late 1941, remaining on their side until WWII end.
Ustaša regime having the immediate and full support of Germany gained ground very quickly forming NDH while expanding their territories in the most part of modern Croatia and half of Bosnia. There they established a series of small concentration and deportation camps similar to the Nazi counterparts, but smaller in operation and size. The prisoners were mostly members of 4 groups, primarily Serbs, followed by Jews, Romas and finally Croats that were either Partisans or a danger to the regime as political adversaries. The most prominent of these Camps were Jadovno near Gospić, Slana and Metajna located in a bare rocky side of island Pag in the Adriatic sea and Jasenovac. The latter was established on August 1941, after the Italian-German forces insisted on closing down Jadovno, Slana and Metjna due to the atrocities that took place there. Jasenovac was located in the borders between Croatia and Bosnia next to the river Sava, around 100 kilometres away from Zagreb and was solely run by the Ustaša armed forces until April 1945. This operational status was unique in all of the Axis states. I shall not get into details about what took place in the camp but I would like to mention the extensive brutality of it as it was recorded by the victim’s testimonies presented in various media and museums, confirmed by international scholars (https://www.facesofresistance.org/ )
After the Allied Forces bombarded Jasenovac, the largest concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia, camp commander Maks Luburić ordered the execution of all of the inmates and the demolition of the camp in order to hide traces of the Ustasha crimes. On April 21 1945 all female inmates were murdered while men realised that they would have a similar fate. One day before the planned mass execution, on 22 April 1945, a group of inmates followed the cry of their fellow inmate Ante Bakotić: ‘Forward, comrades!’ and joined the breakthrough from the camp. Of some 670 inmates who had participated in the breakthrough, only 89 reached freedom. The Day of the Breakthrough from the Jasenovac Concentration Camp is marked annually in memory of those who attempted the breakthrough and in memory of the other victims.
Evidently, Partisans assisted by USSR pushed back the Ustaši and Četniks from Bosnia and Croatia and subsequently reached Jasenovac in April 1945. After Berlin fell all the puppet states were forced into surrender. Ustaši high ranking officials, soldiers and civilians tried to flee the country passing to Slovenia in an attempt to reach their former ally, Austria. There, near the border of the two countries, next to the village of Bleiburg, defeated Ustaši, Četnics and other collaborating forces from Nazi-Fascist Coalition asked for the assistance of the British army located near by. Having denied the help they were imprisoned and forced to repatriate in a huge march where many were eventually assassinated by the Partisan Army on the way back (May 1945). After these events, Tito put on “trial” his political adversary Mihailović, who was executed and thus the Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established in the aftermath of WWII, geographically similar to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, extended in islands, some Dalmatian towns and the Istrian peninsula, which were in between the wars under control of Italy.
For about 15 years the Camp remained in ruins and its history was generalized signifying only the people’s victory over the terror of Fascism. For the first 10 years the memory surrounding the events of the Second World War in Yugoslavia, like in most of the Communist states in the East Block had as protagonist the Partisan, who fought, suffered and died because of the “(communist) cause”. “Neutral victims” such as Jewish and Romas were put aside because they did not assist the ideological formation of the states. For Eastern Europe the Holocaust was not a founding myth, unlike the West, but it was a solid ground to politically manipulate for the formation of the collective memory.
By the end of 1950s a shift can be seen regarding the treatment of the victims worldwide. Many socialist countries such as East Germany and Poland started various projects wanted to construct Memorial Sites in the location of the Nazi Camps. Yugoslavia took part in the formation of these plans, such as the Memorial Center in Dahau, but was not yet ready to involve it self in the internal issues of open commemoration. What was important was to secure its place in the list of European countries who took part in the anti-fascist resistance during the War.
Heike Karge argues that two significant projects, funded on the Federal level, were implemented in Yugoslavia, both on the territory of the Republic of Croatia. The first one was the construction of a cemetery near the town of Kampor in the island of Rab in 1953. This site was very important because, unlike Jasenovac it was an Italian Camp with mostly Jewish, Croatian and Slovene prisoners. After it was liberated, many of them joined the partisan forces in the antifascist struggle. Here we can see a perfect narrative unfolding alighting with the Party policy, that of a self-liberation and heroism of the Partisans, instead of victimization. (2012 :111)
The second great project was the Memorial Center in Jasenovac that opened in 1966. One could wonder how the Party funded a project that was the exact counter argument of the main policy. Jasenovac was a place that divided the population into nations and religions due to its past events. Following requests of victims’ families and with the pressure of many organizations regarding the commemoration of the victims of the war that were forming in the late 50s and were gaining public recognition, the Party decided to open a Memorial Site in situ. At that time, in Belgrade an initiative by the name of Action Committee of Jasenovac Prisoners (Akcioni odbor logoraša Jasenovca) was created primarily with the goal “of constructing a memorial to those who fell in Jasenovac.” This organization was the first to organize survivor visits to the camp grounds and greatly influenced a wider public. Jasenovac, after all, was a great signifier of the socialist regime and a founding myth of the Federation, in the same way Holocaust served as a negative solid foundation for a post-WW II Europe and European Union. Two organizations were in charge for its realization, the Conservation Institute of the National Republic of Croatia and the Central Committee of the Federation of War Veterans’ Organizations of Yugoslavia. This is interesting because the common practice was that memorial services or monuments were organized and funded by the local population or the Republic concerned. Nevertheless, Jasenovac was fully funded by the Federation, the only camp or location concerning the events of the War that had this treatment.
Eventually the first form of official commemoration on the site was the “Flower” designed by the Serbian-Yugoslav architect Bogdan Bogdanović in 1966 that was immediately installed in a field near the soon to open Memorial Center in Jasenovac. Bogdanović said about his creation the same year “And so the basic symbol is precisely a FLOWER, the symbol of eternal renewal..., with the superstructure, turned in two ways – through the crypt towards the victims from whom it draws its roots, and the crown, as a kind of inversed dome, towards the light and the sun. Symbolically towards life and freedom”(http://www.jusp-jasenovac.hr/ ). This humongous structure can be seen as a token of the everlasting memory of this historical site, significant not only to Croatian but European history as well. Few additional artworks were placed in the site, first the "Relief Dedicated to the Victims of Fascism in Jasenovac”, created by Dušan Džamonja in 1968, while Stanko Jančićn created “The Dead Open the Eyes of the Living” and the "Dead Inmate" were later added, both placed in the center of the village of Jasenovac.
Even though we can certainly appreciate the meaning and rough beauty of these artworks, we have to acknowledge that they did not fall afar from the official State line which, as I mentioned above, aimed to use the site as a story to unite people in the struggle against Fascism and not to divide the Federation by focusing on the details of the events that took place there 20 years ago.
Tito ruling the Communist Party enforced directly and indirectly the slogan of “Bratstvo i Jedinstvo” (Brotherhood and Unity) among all the Republic and its population under the principles of socialism as he enforced them. He tried to avoid the ethnic and nationalistic antagonisms and legalize his presence by a common ideological struggle and success. In this sense we can argue that the Memorial Center was imagined to actualize exactly this cause, by fading the specifics of the events and create the feeling of unity, this being the common struggle of all Republics against Fascism. This Center was active from 1966 until 1991, but when the War started in the area, between the local Serbs forces assisted by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) one the one side, and the Croatian forces one the other side, it closed down and a big part of its collection was transferred to a safe location in the north, so as to be protected.
After the Yugoslav War and creation of the new States, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Croatian Republic and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, all created their own victim-narrative surrounding the events of the Second World War that were suppressed the last 50 years, in favor of the Yugoslav idea and identity. In this situation, Croatia had to deal with its past, to negotiate it and in some ways reinvent it. One prominent example, related to Jasenovac, was the famous suggestion of the first president of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, in an attempt to reconcile Ustaša and Partisan past in Croatia. He proposed, therefore, to transfer the bones of the fallen Ustaši from Blielburg to Jasenovac in an attempt to show that they both fought for the same end-goal, albeit with a different ideology and means (Radonić :2011). This end goal was of course the creation of the first independent Croatian state. The proposal, however, was ultimately withdrawn due to local and international criticism as an attempt to honour the defeated Nazi troupes. What we can see from this suggestion however was that since the independence of Croatia in 1990, Bleiburg became the national counter-toponym of Jasenovac.
According to Mark Biondich, the after War period created two different memory spheres in the Croatian public. The population living in socialist Yugoslavia followed the dominant rhetoric of united struggle, where the migrant Croatian communities abroad, usually sympathizers of the Ustaši regime, formed a completely different narrative and perspective. According to them Pavelić and his regime intended and finally managed the state’s independence, a “historic claim” that presided even the Kingdom of Yugoslavia inside the Croatian circles of the intelligentsia in Zagreb. The Western powers did not give great importance to the claims of the Croats for independence during the Austro-Hungarian rule, thus when the situation was right Ustaši were driven to ask for help from Nazi Germany. One more argument as an attempt to justify the actions of the regime was the explanation that because the events took place in the land of NDH, Pavelić was forced to defend his state from the partisans and the Serbs, regardless they State’s official line relating to these groups. The atrocities were part of the Nazi pressure to which they had to comply by in order to keep their favor in the turbulent times of war. This reasoning of course could not be a product of internal open discussion about the past in Yugoslavia. Only after the End of the Yugoslav War these topics could be again discussed inside each country, avoiding the dialog with each other.
Countries of the East block after 1989 had to come in terms with their own history and involvement in the Wars that shadowed the 20th century. The communist narrative was widely replaced by the nationalist, with the very important difference that nowadays people could more easily question the events or the interpretation of them by the State. This historical revisionism that took place was apparent in the official stance in many areas of the public sphere. Regarding our case, locations changed names in order to depict the orientation of the modern state. Most prominent examples in Zagreb are the name change of two squares. The first one was the Trg Repubike (Square of the Republic, since 1948) that has now been renamed to Trg Bana Josipa Jelačića (Square of Ban Josip Jelačić). This was its previous name since 1848, named after the Leader of the same name during the Austro-Hungarian empire, who managed to give Croatia a great deal of autonomy under the Hungarians. The second square that was effected was the one that eventually K19 was installed, that of “Trg Žrtava Fašizma" (The Victims of Fascism). For about 10 years, starting in 1990 the square was called “Square of the Great Croatians” (Trg Hrvatskih Velikana), being renamed Trg Žrtava Fašizma again in 2000, a year after Tuđman's death. These two cases, together with new street and park names thought out the country indicate the attempt of the first government to set the scene for the people of the new independent Croatia and show its interpretation about the past, getting rid of the communist memories and attitudes.
To return to the camp in question, what was finally decided was the re-establishment of the Memorial Center with a universal orientation, a new museum following the intentional standards with an educational, moral compass and aim. The main museums-role models were the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington. These two sites focus of the universality of the human suffering having as the main exhibit the victims of the Holocaust. They created a locus of memory, a tribute of loss and achieving a lesson thought atrocity. (Radonić 2018)
Thus, the second period of the Center’s existence begun in 2006 by the Croatian State (1991- ) depicting the universal trauma of victims of War, focusing on WW II and the events that took place there, but blurring again the details. This intention of the institution can be very well understood if we see the comment of its first director Nataša Jovičić, who claimed that “we want to be part of the modern European education and museum system and follow the framework we get from the institutions dealing with these topics” (Vjesnik, 24/7/2004). Later on she argues that the modern theme of the Center was conceptualized by a team of international curators and experts that work in relevant museums and memorial centers about the Holocaust. Clearly, one can see the resemblance of the permanent exhibition with the ones abroad, found all over Europe and U.S.A. Dark walls with white dim colors, photographs and personal belongings of the victims, together with series of names on the wall. Nevertheless, we must always keep in mind that “Memorial museums tend to be sites used for the representation of identity, the canonization of official memory, and the presentation of the dominant historical narrative designed to serve as the foundation of the present”(Radonić: 2011).
What is most important to highlight is that being influenced by international experts who have focused in the events of the Holocaust, the locality and specificity of the events that took place in the five complexes of the Jasenovac concentration camp, with the majority of inmates being Serbs, rather than Jews, is lost or simplified. They use a global language trying to intertwine it with the actual events that took place in situ. The focus now are the people who suffered, their stories, testimonies, faces and bodies. The history and particularity, even thought acknowledged briefly and in rough terms both on the exhibition it self and on the museum’s website is not the main protagonist. This period between 1941- 45 was enough to create social cleavages and mark a dark page in Croatian and Yugoslav history that had to be dealt with eventually both on the public and the private sphere.
The Memorial Center opened 11 years after the war with a new perspective. The aim was not to talk about the Ustaša regime and the Serbian population that suffered behind its walls, along with others. The German historian Ersnt Nolte (1985) referring to the events of the Second World War claimed that these atrocities can not be forgotten but continually manage to be the starting point of many discussions and conflicts, due to their excess and catastrophic aftermaths in this grant scale. Therefore, we can refer to his famous quote that some events are “A Past that Can not Pass” and apply it in out case in question. Jasenovac is a location and a historical memory that is ever-present because it can still inflict pain and create memories along with discussion and division among the population, communities and nations. By having the role of an educational site, giving moral examples of the human atrocities it tries to deviate from this open political rhetoric and actualize a safe location of unity and reflection, such as it’s counterpart museums and memorial centres not only in Eastern Europe, but in the whole world.
The now outdated exhibition from 2006 has been disputed from the opening. Gradually, ground for new exhibition is prepared by research of Jasenovac Memorial curators, especially Đorđe Mihovilović, and other scientists. Recently, Croatian historian Ivo Goldstein presented his new book with title “Jasenovac”, with intention of countering widespread historical revisionism about the concentration camp, in which the chronological development of events at the camp, which was run by the Croatian fascist Ustasha movement are outlined.
In recent memory struggle, only a paramilitary organization, called Croatian Defense Force (HOS – Hrvatske Obrambene Snage) in 2016 placed illegally a memorial plague as a tribute to the 5 fallen members of the group during the Yugoslav War near the Memorial Center. An inscription with the phrase “Za Dom spremni” (Ready for the Homeland), a salute that was used by the Ustaši, equal to the German “Seig Heil” was engraved together with the emblem of the organization with the Ustaši flag on it. After the protests that this action caused in Croatian and international public the group argued that this salute was used during the “Homeland War” between comrades and that is why it was chosen. Nevertheless, after prolonged public debate, it was removed from the location and was installed in the nearby town of Novska, where it still stands. Revolted by slow reaction of Government of Republic Croatia Coordination of Jewish Community Municipalities of Croatia, Serb National Council and antifascist associations still boycott annual official commemoration and organise their own remembrance ceremonies. We can see that still nowadays Jasenovac remains a place where the past means the present and is a great indicator in people’s aspirations relating the Croatian history.
In these conditions that I have presented above I believe that K19 talks about the specificity of history. Realizing the act of brick making in Jasenovac, victims do not remain numbers, which is the topic of heated debates by all parts involved. They become actual people, prisoners of an ideology, religion or even race, locked down, forced to create. They are not just victims of Holocaust, they are also victims of the Ustaša regime who had seized the power in Croatia. Each brick could tell a person’s story or struggle, or maybe, to put it roughly, just a piece of clay formed under specific conditions. Where the “Flower” talks about the victims of Holocaust, K19 talks about the victims of Jasenovac. Whether K19 becomes a part of the exhibition remains to be seen, but the birth place of these bricks, that became an artwork formed to great pillars, is undoubtedly in this very location.
This critical exploration of the Zlakto Kopljar works in the public space makes us think of what do people and the state above want, should or have to remember and why. Zlakto Kopljar manages to provoke, but not for the sake of provocation. He inspires the acts of recollection and dealing with the past throughout his work and so he does in K6 and K19. He represents ideas, memories and facts by actually presenting them like uncut gems. Both personal stories or these of others became part of his narrative in self expression and political speech through an artistic medium, perceived as such.
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• Zlatko Kopljar K19. Zagreb.2014
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