Art installation comprised of 13 white points
indicating „Tito“ in Braille‘s alphabet (letters that do not know nationality)
were placed on the remains of the former inscription „Long Live Tito“ on the
Vratolomac Mountain above Zvornik, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Tito was a president of Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia,
Slovenia and Montenegro). Project for monument TITO was conceived as a result
of a personal and emotional search for a lost sign – a symbol of the time when
I was born. The inscription Tito I first saw in the early childhood from my
aunt's terrace on a hilltop above Zvornik (Bosnia and Herzegovina). During the
war of the nineties it was neglected and destroyed. Later I learned that my
parents were at the very same terrace when the news of Tito's death was broadcasted
and when they wept together. 25 years later, I look back from my aunt's
terrace, the inscription no longer exists, but there still is a petrified
memory of it. There is war footage from 1992, exposes in a split second, that
far away, high up on the hill there still exists something reminding to the
Tito sign, but the cameraman pans the camera out to the street where killed
civilians are laying dead and towards people who are throwing the dead into a
truck trailer. It was the last time the inscription was seen. The inscription
Tito, visible from almost every street, house, and apartment in Zvornik disappeared.
It was not acceptable for anybody; its symbolic capital was dead.
The psychological magic of Tito's death
forced Mustafa Odobašić alone, to carry alone, 12 tons of stone up the hill
Vratolomac above Zvornik to imprint the name of Tito. The absurdity of every
war forced me to leave 13 white circles on the remains of Mustafa Odobašić’s
inscription, meaning TITO in Braille letters. The meaning remains the same,
only the lettering differs. The letter does not recognize nationalism and
religion, but a basic human need to understand the world around. "A
WATCHING LETTER" becomes anti-memorial now, allowing the viewer to
understand the unspeakable. It encourages irony that destabilizes the memory
and opens up discussion on how we remember and what we remember. It does not impose
meaning, but rather forming a personal and collective responsibilityof the
individual according to the events that led to the disappearance of many lives
that once loved to look at the TITO sign.
