Sarajevo Walking Tours

Sarajevo Walking Tours, performance/guided tour, 2014.

“Sarajevo Walking Tours” was a three-day guided tour to discover Sarajevo walking through Prato. The streets of Prato, the architecture, the landscape are used to imagine Sarajevo. The two cities were physically connected by an overlay of their respective maps.
Three different travel itineraries were covered during the three days. First the historic center, the Latin Bridge, The National Library, the churches, the mosquees, the synagogues, simbols of a multiconfessional city; the second day was dedicated to Marijndvor, the frontline during the siege of the city; finally the new city center along the Milijacka river.  Every day, for two hours, we walked through one city in search of another: the National Library in a building under restoration; the National Theatre of Sarajevo in a monumental cemetery in Prato; the Orthodox Church in a monastery; the Jewish Museum in the courtyard of the palace which houses a choir. The places were paired according to the established rule by placing one map on top of the other, at the same scale, so the distance we did was the real distance between two places in Sarajevo.

During the guided tours some actors read texts about Sarajevo; moreover some acustical suggestion was added, like a musical performance of Albinoni Adagio, remembering the mourning made by the cello player Vedran Smailović after the burning of the National LIbrary, or some audio pieces extracted from original footage of the war provided by Sanel Agic, a Sarajevo boy during the siege, now living in Prato.

Because we were seeing Prato and listening Sarajevo.

I asked other artists to add their personal contribution in some places of the guided tours; Raffaele di Vaia performance Insetti consisting in drawing insects in the Sniper Alley; Franco Menicagli that put his new sculpture in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Sarajevo, with a main collection of more than 130 works of international artists and no building to show them. The two cities recalled one another, as a game of mirrors.

This work was conceived for the project Prato Sarajevo – Art Invasion, curated by the Pecci Center of Contemporary art, Dryphoto arte contemporanea, Kinkaleri and in collaboration with the The museum of Contemporary Art of Sarajevo, ARS AEVI. The main aim of the project was to connect the Italian and the Bosnian cities, addressing pressing issues in a social, political, and historical climate.

Tours guides: Alessia Cecconi, Alessio Zipoli, Massimo Bressan, Attilio Maltinti, Giusi Cappellini, Stella Carbone, Vittoria Ciolini.

Texts and music performed by: Cristina Abati, Sanel Agic, Francesco Rotelli, Francesco Mancini.

Artistic contribution: Raffaele di Vaia, Franco Menicagli, Chiara Bettazzi, Tatiana Villani e Manuel Perna.

Photo by Andrea Abati

Review on NYR magazine. http://notasyreflexiones.com/article-guide-valentina-lapolla/