ARchipelago – a site-specific archival platform via an AR app and a web archive

Digital art and research project

ARchipelago is a site-specific archival platform in the post-Yugoslav context that brings together war document collections. Thirty years after the wars that led to and followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, many dedicated archival initiatives collectively offer an important multi-perspective view of the region's recent history. But they rarely come together and often struggle with repression in their respective local contexts. This is where the ARchipelago comes in, turning a smartphone into an easily accessible archaeological device independent of local political restrictions while bringing together a multitude of archival voices. Historical audio-visual documents tagged with GPS data will be available via an augmented reality (AR) app. Diverse archival holdings can be made topographically and interactively accessible at places they are linked to and encountered in a low-threshold way. The digital art and research project connects different archival initiatives exploring the technology of AR as hands-on participatory archival practices within the Post-Yugoslav space. It introduces a carefully curated multi-perspective view of the region’s recent history that encourages audience interaction via a mobile AR app, a website archive as well as accompanying public events such as exhibitions, workshops, and film screenings in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo as well as internationally. 

Together with ARchipelago’s partners, in every city, we are exploring different site-specific cases and representational methods through which material is curated and made available in the Augmented Reality realm. In Belgrade (Serbia), a collection of counter-memorialization to the "General Stab'' will be built up, the former military headquarters of the Yugoslav National Army (YNA) that was destroyed during the NATO bombardments (1999). In Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), the focus is on microstories, visual collections from various neighborhoods, and public spaces that play an important social role in Sarajevo, including life during the siege (1992 - 1996). In Mostar (Bosnia & Herzegovina), the river Neretva will be explored as a flowing archive of the war in relation to the city and interspecies society living in the toxic and destroyed post-war environment. In Prizren (Kosovo), the collection of Naci and Nafis Lokvica, amateur videographers who documented pre and war-related protests, public events, and Prizren’s transforming urban landscape, is the starting point for collecting further comparative archival material.

Developed by Armina Pilav (Un-War Space Lab), Nihad Kreśevljaković (Library Hamdija Kreśevljaković Video Arhiv), and Clarissa Thieme (Izmedju Nas / Between Us, open archive initiative) in collaboration with Augmented Archive (Kaya Behkalam and Farhan Khalid).

Archival and research partners CZKD - Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade, SRB, Dokufest Prizren, XXK
, Library Hamdija Kreśevljaković, Sarajevo, BiH; Un-War Space Lab, Brać, HRV
& Mostar, BiH

Partners Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V, DEU; Augmented Archive, TUR/DEU; Austrian Cultural Forum (Austrian Embassy, Sarajevo); Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo); Fondacioni Lumbardhi, Prizren, XXK
; Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Dialogue Southeast Europe (Berlin, DEU); Goethe Institute Sarajevo, BiH; Historical Museum Sarajevo, BiH; Institut Francais (Sarajevo); Izmedju Nas / Between Us, open archive project, BiH 

Artistic directors Armina Pilav & Clarissa Thieme in collaboration with Kaya Behkalam

Implementing Institution Goethe Institute Sarajevo, BiH

Funded by Goethe-Institute Excellency Project Initiative 2023/24 & EUNIC European Spaces of Cultures Program 2023

Clarissa Thieme's development research was supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, part of NEUSTART KULTUR of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media, Germany (BKM).