Bart Lodewijks - The Spomenik Drawings (English) by Roma Publications

Bart Lodewijks The Spomenik Drawings

English

The Spomenik Drawings

In 1997 I went on a cycling trip to Sarajevo, where despite the Peace Agreement, the war raged on in the minds of the population. Their experiences were too overpowering for me to brush aside. Over the next couple of years I returned to Bosnia to work on a documentary about its reconstruction, but it was rough going. Pointing a camera at things is different than looking at them with the naked eye, and shooting video turned me into a bad soldier. It’s a dangerous business. I lost a little piece of myself — nothing compared to what is lost in a war, but it connected me to that land. In the summer of 2024 I return to Bosnia to assist the photographer Jan Kempenaers during a trip. He is there to document the Spomeniks, futuristic monuments erected to commemorate the victory of the Partisans over the Fascists in the Second World War. Although I would like to draw on the Spomeniks, I am hesitant. They are there to heal the country’s wounds.

Eventually we come across the ruins of a Spomenik in the city of Drvar that is overgrown by thistles and bushes. Thus stripped of its power, it somehow also belongs to me. The panels contain carved reliefs of fleeing civilians and a young soldier: what a shock it must be to die on the battlefield. These people were once here among us and they cannot be erased, even if everyone has forgotten them. As I draw on the soldier’s face with chalk, a long-lost piece of myself is uplifted.

Revisiting Bosnia

1997. My hands rest lightly on the handlebars and the wind is blowing through my hair. It is a stifling hot day under a cloudless sky as I ride into a world that seems strewn with mortar. Roads have been ripped open. Houses lie in heaps of ash or are missing roofs, their façades riddled with bullet holes. Amidst all this are rattling cement mixers and piles of hollow bricks. People are reinhabiting the homes they were driven out of during the war; the reconstruction in Europe’s backyard is in full swing. It only took one-and-a-half weeks to cycle here from the Netherlands, the road running steeply up and down. As I climb the hills, I’m engrossed in the jaw-dropping destruction I see around me. An invisible hand pushes me deeper into the country, where Sarajevo, with its lovely sounding name, lies in ruins. The war is breathing down my neck.

Back in Amsterdam I start on my final year at the art academy but can’t quite find my rhythm. My thoughts keep drifting to Bosnia. I want to report on that battered country, make a testament to the resilience of the people living there. I snap up a blue Fiat at a fair price from an auto dealer, and the director of the art academy lends me a film camera. ‘That way, we can see what you see,’ he says. I then return to Bosnia accompanied by a sound technician and an interpreter, who also serves as our guide. Three men are stronger than one. We dub the car our ‘Blue Helmet’, a nod towards the UN troops keeping the peace in the country. The Dutch broadcasting company VPRO has been kind enough to provide us with videotapes and sound equipment and has put their editorial staff and archives at our disposal. It is in a darkened room at their offices that I watch the six-part BBC documentary The Death of Yugoslavia. A week later we are driving along demolished roads, through unlit tunnels and across nameless expanses and interviewing people about the scars left by the war and how they are moving forward.

‘The international community is a many-headed hydra and many of these heads […] are antagonistic to each other necessarily. It depends

[…] what their own particular aims and objectives in the region are,’ says the spokesperson of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Sarajevo, the highest international body in charge of overseeing implementation of the Peace Agreement. He drums his fingers on the shiny tabletop and continues: ‘Bosnia is like having an alcoholic brother-in-law […] he’ll always end up pissed-drunk on your doorstep blaming everybody else.’ Not far from their offices are the headquarters of the Taliban, whose humanitarian arm complied with the conditions set out in the Peace Agreement and was allowed to help. The façade reads ‘Taliban International’ in large letters.

We visit the outskirts of Sarajevo, where men in bulletproof gear comb the surroundings, prodding sticks with long needles into the ground centimetre by centimetre until they hit something solid. The smaller landmines look like little bouncy balls, the larger ones like ice hockey pucks. An Afghan with sharply chiselled features who speaks the men’s languages is their representative and interpreter. ‘The crazy situation is also, we put those mines for free, now we destroy them for money,’ he translates.

The car engine hums, the radio playing softly. I’m slouched down in the backseat and the interview with the Afghan is echoing in my head. I may be the only one of us without a driver’s licence but I’m the one in charge. Still, it’s Martin who is behind the wheel, terse and tenacious. I came into contact with him through the Stichting Vredesburo Eindhoven, a Dutch peace alliance where he works. I had originally approached them looking for Kees Koning, a priest, ex-military chaplain and pacifist who was in Bosnia during the war. Koning became famous in the Netherlands for infiltrating a hangar on the Woensdrecht air base and taking an axe to the fighter aircraft there, citing the biblical prophecy that ‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares’. I had wanted to consult with him as part of my preparations for the documentary, but it was too late. The good man had died several months earlier.

The Vredesburo then put me in touch with Martin, who had also been in parts of the former Yugoslavia during the war. Shortly after it

ended he set up a peace outpost in Sarajevo and learned the language. He wrote a book about it without ever having read one: In the Balkan of the Mind is about war and music, about Bosnia and himself. ‘The society here is not as individualistic as in the Netherlands,’ it says in the book that accompanies us on the trip, which includes a cover insert with a CD of music by bands Martin champions. ‘Turning swords into music instruments,’ he says. Gerard calls him the Bosnian potato, and the two of them have really hit it off. I don’t know Gerard that well either. He was the only sound technician I could find on such short notice who could take on the job. And he knows how to open doors with his soldier’s sense of humour, which comes in handy. ‘We’re making a porn film in Thailand,’ he tells the customs officer at the Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb Republic) border. And the guard lets us through.

It’s the short days of December, and we’ve been traveling the country for a week now. Our best interview so far was with the spokesperson for the Office of the High Representative, but the camera is like a millstone around my neck. Half the time I forget to turn it on, which inevitably earns me a tongue-lashing from Martin. He eyes me in the rearview mirror. ‘Driving a car is not your thing, huh?’ he says. Has he sensed that his driving style is making me queasy and that I’m not quite sure where we are? I think back to the cricket concerts and the feel of the sun on my arms when I was cycling on my own through Bosnia. One time when my tyre got punctured, a young farmer who spoke a little German helped me patch the hole. ‘I will pump up the tyre for you,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can offer you in exchange, by way of thanks?’ I asked. ‘All I require is discipline, nothing more,’ he replied.

‘Look, there goes an ecological disaster,’ Martin says, indicating a lorry in front of us loaded with tree trunks. ‘At the end of the war the soldiers were paid in timber. Entire forests have been wiped from the face of the earth. International organizations have donated money to help save as much as possible, but the timber industry is controlled by a military hierarchy. Meanwhile, there is someone who has started an

ecological art settlement in Republika Srpska. His name is Boro and the village is called Zelenkovac. It, too, receives a lot of support from the international community.’

That is where we are headed. We pass a burnt-out military truck along the way. ‘This area saw the heaviest fighting in the war,’ Martin says. I press the camera to my chest, at the ready to film. At a car park we notice a truck with flashing Christmas lights and stop to record the scene. Four heavyset blokes walk up to us. It’s only when there’s no camera in sight that the real contact with the local people can occur, but as soon as the technology comes out, I become a tightly wound spring. My view is hemmed in by the rectangular frame and electricity buzzes through my head. ‘What’s going on here?’ the oldest of the group asks. I look at Martin from behind the camera. ‘We’re making a film about nice cars,’ he says. ‘Dobro, good, okay,’ says the man. He unfolds a sheet of paper. ‘Take a shot of this then,’ he adds. I recognize the logo of the International Criminal Court. ‘He says he’s been offered a luxury apartment in The Hague,’ Martin translates. ‘He’s been charged with war crimes.’ As I pan the camera over the face of the accused, Martin blows up at me. ‘Jebem ti kurac,’ he shouts, which is a vulgar insult in Bosnian. Why is he attacking me in public? He’s pushing the boundaries too far, I think to myself. But then, what are the boundaries in this country? What do I even know of boundaries? ‘Don’t film him until he’s given his permission, for fuck’s sake,’ Martin says.

I shoot footage of felled trees, cleaved trunks and log hauler trailers on the road. We call the lorries filled with tree trunks ‘loggies’. Also caught on tape are the questionable wheelings and dealings of the entrepreneurially inclined Afghan and his crew, though I missed part of that interview because the camera was off.

Martin swears when I don’t do what he says. He’s given his heart and soul to this country, and he’s on a mission, which makes it difficult to contradict him. But meanwhile I’m becoming increasingly distanced from myself. And the footage we have so far lacks a through-line of any sort. I can barely bring myself to look at it. By the

time we reach Zelenkovac I’m completely drained and consumed by gloomy thoughts.

The village is sealed off from the outside world by the edges of a forest. Narrow watercourses divide the encampment into strips of land that can be accessed by means of jerry-built bridges and duckboards. There are twelve log cabins, with fairy-tale moss growing on the thick logs and steeply pitched roofs, curtains in front of the windows and icicles hanging from the gutters. Smoke curls up from the chimneys. Boro is a sensitive soul in his fifties, with a dark beard and black hat — not exactly the kind of guy to take on corruption and illegal logging, more of a poet or philosopher. Kees Koning had a beard like that. He thought of his deeds not as valiant, but as consequential. He didn’t wage war; he waged peace. Just before the start of the Gulf War he and a group of peace activists set up a tent encampment between the armies of Saddam Hussein and Operation Desert Storm to try and prevent the pending military conflict. Towards the end of his life he was a newspaper deliveryman for the Eindhovens Dagblad; he was found dead of a heart attack next to his bicycle.

‘Some of the people live here, but most just stay for a weekend and then leave again,’ Boro says. Martin speaks Dutch, Bosnian and English like one language. Gerard is going on a bender. I pace around. The largest log cabin in the settlement serves as a bar and exhibition space, and hanging above the entrance to the compound is a long birch plank with a sentence carved into it in Cyrillic script. ‘During the war everyone left the area,’ Boro explains. ‘Many never to return. But I stayed. The sign says: “Why did you stay, Boro?!”’

Dusk is falling, the day coming to an end, and Martin and Gerard decide to turn in early. In the bar Boro builds a fire and closes the curtains. Sheepskins are strewn about the floor. It’s just the two of us — utterly quiet, except for the crackling fire. He throws on some more logs. Slowly, the hardness that has been tormenting me these past couple of weeks starts to melt. Together, we head into the night, with the alcohol flowing freely.

On the walls are a series of finely painted landscapes. Each

canvas has a building in the middle of it that seems to float there. ‘Those buildings were all destroyed in the war. You won’t see them anymore,’ Boro says. ‘Take that watermill, for example. Not a single splinter of it remains. And there aren’t any photos of it either; it only still exists on canvas. The artist painted the landscape first and then added the mill at the direction of the mill owner.’

He keeps retreating to the back of the bar and returning with two small glasses of rakija, filled to the brim. Our night of drinking yields new insights. I confide in him about my issues with Martin.

‘He won’t rest until he’s shown you every last corner of Bosnia,’ Boro says. He takes off his hat, revealing the furrows in his brow. The coals are glowing in the hearth and cold seeps in from under the floor. ‘So, you’re studying at the art academy and making a documentary in Bosnia. How did that come about?’ he asks.

‘The director of the academy suggested I do something I was not good at. So I started assisting some other students who were making video art. That’s how I ended up meeting someone working in TV who introduced me to the editorial team at De Nieuwe Wereld, an in-depth news programme. When I later told the producer about my plans for a documentary, he gave me videotapes and sound recording equipment. That’s the long and the short of it.’

Boro takes a sip of his drink. Deep down, I am ashamed about this sequence of events. What if he thinks I used my fellow students for my personal gain. I’m the only one working with the broadcasting company, but I would never be where I was right now without them. I pledge to myself to include their names in the credits. ‘Every good story needs a frame with a top, a bottom and two sides,’ Boro says, interrupting my thoughts. ‘The rectangular framing of the camera provides that,’ I respond, ‘but I keep getting it wrong.’

The next morning we say goodbye to Boro and drive to Sarajevo to celebrate New Year’s Eve. My eyelids feel like lead. Gerard sleeps for the entire drive. Martin talks nonstop about all the things we still have to record, but I keep the camera in my bag. That night we hear machine gun fire on the streets. ‘Jebem ti kurac,’ Martin swears.

On New Year’s Day we visit a psychiatric hospital, the staff of which are still in bed. Music is playing and the patients mill about. A tall oaf in a beige tweed coat is dancing and jumping up and down, waving his arms and gazing intently at the camera lens. He’s wearing a sort of protective helmet with a built-in bumper on his head that looks like an aviator cap. I hand the camera over to one of the patients; I don’t care what Martin thinks. The patients film one another and pass the thing around. I’m no longer in charge, I just let it happen. The first snow of the new year starts falling outside. I push deeper into the hospital, met by the musty smell of mildewed clothing. Blue light washes across a shiny floor. There are people with hydrocephalus lying in their beds, and an old man is standing at the end of the hallway, backlit by a giant window. He sways to the rhythm of the music, uttering random words and the names of places and presidents: ‘Clinton, Montenegro, Bush, Clinton, Montenegro, Israel, you see, he has, Major, good Serbia good, Italy, amigo, France, sea, Izetbegović, Korcula, Konjic, Kinkel, okay…’

In 2024 I rewatch my documentary from 1998. ‘Kinkel, Bush, Izetbegović, Clinton…’ The names cut through my soul as if the man never stopped saying them. The hallway is shorter and more narrow than I remembered it, the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of it sectioned into rectangular panes. The diffuse blue backlighting, the shiny floor, snowflakes hitting the windowpanes… The big oaf in the aviator hat looks into the camera lens. The images become jerky as the patients film one another. I hear Martin ordering me to stop as I wander through the halls and into the room with the beds. Outside a pale young man of about nineteen waves goodbye to us. I film him through the rear window as we drive off. He has a timid boy’s face with blue eyes and is wearing a yellow knit cap. The hospital disappears behind a snow-covered hill. All in a world practically devoid of colour. We drive through a gorge with rocky outcroppings and rubble on either side. Then come the credits: the names of my fellow students.

The unarmed eye

The natural splendour is as dizzying as it was in the late 1990s, but the roads are better and the houses have been restored. I’m back in Bosnia to assist Jan Kempenaers as he documents Spomeniks. In early 2000 he photographed 26 of these war monuments and that was turned into a book. Now, a quarter of a century later, he is starting on a new series. This time the aim is to capture hundreds of them, spread across Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro. This project too will result in a book. And this summer he’s doing northern Bosnia, where Zelenkovac is located, so I go along.

‘Spomenik’ is Serbo-Croatian for ‘monument’. In the 1960s President Tito of the former Yugoslavia had tens of thousands of these memorials erected throughout the republic. Constructed of concrete and steel, they look like spaceships in the landscape, with geometric shapes resembling wings or flowers, and they can be up to thirty metres tall. Because it was imperative not to cause offence, patriotic or nationalistic symbols such as hammers, sickles, Partisan stars and riders on horseback were avoided, though according to Jan you do still sometimes see them. It was important that the defeated factions also be able to recognize themselves in the images; the populace needed to meet the future as a united front. Positive change was afoot (despite the fact that Tito took a hard line against his opponents) and there must never again be war. In fact, the Spomenik building program was specifically accompanied by a series of public lectures and meetings.

I tiptoe my way through the country that has meant so much to me personally, where so much has happened and everything still seems tenuous. We hit the road in a small Skoda rental car, with me as a passenger. I hand over lenses, set up the tripod, make sandwiches and basically do what I was doing back at the art academy when this all started: I assist. I’m still able to follow someone else’s directions and make myself small, invisible and of service. All the while I feast my eyes and ears on everything around me. A new story develops,

framed by a top, a bottom and two sides, but my view is no longer rectangular and there is no electricity buzzing through my head.

The Spomeniks are larger and more graceful than I expected. Most are in good condition. Sometimes they look like a spaceship, a grenade, a missile or an explosion. A few have human figures hewn in relief on them. Plaques erected alongside the monuments contain information about battles, executions or prison camps, wreathed in a list of the names of the fallen soldiers and civilian casualties. Not all of the sites are well mapped, however. While we can find them right off in the cities, other places it takes some real detective work. We drive through country lanes, follow cart tracks and gather information from herdsmen and farmers.

Jan is scouting a muddy forest path on foot while I wait for him in the car. It’s been raining all afternoon. The engine idles and the windscreen wipers whip hysterically back and forth. There’s a box of chalk in the boot, enough to draw on the Spomeniks, but they’ve put up a wall so far. I open the car door for Jan and he settles back in behind the wheel. ‘With all this rain, we can’t take any photos. Let’s go to your village.’

The hills are shrouded in a grey mist, in a landscape veined with streams. As we approach Zelenkovac, the past starts coming forebodingly closer. The trees are thicker and denser than before. I haven’t announced my visit. Will Boro still be there? Maybe I will find a trace of my younger self in the settlement, the soldier who so cursed his weapon.

‘Why did you stay, Boro?!’ The wooden sign with the text in Cyrillic script is still hanging there. I can’t take my eyes off it. The title of the documentary was borrowed from it. The sandy path, the wooden duckboards and the log cabins are the same as always. A group of young people is sitting at a table under a porch roof. The rain has stopped and steam is rising from the woods. The deer, wolves and bears can come out of hiding.

‘Hi, how’s it going?’ It’s Boro, looking me in the eye. We give each other a hug. ‘You look younger,’ he says and turns to the group

of young people. ‘This guy made a documentary about our country. I have a copy of it at home.’ The short hair and trim beard look good on him. He’s more well turned out than he used to be. ‘You’ve become younger too,’ I say, ‘but what happened to your black hat?’

Untouched by time we sit down at the bar. The paintings are hanging in the same exact place, and there’s a cat purring on one of the sheepskins. Jan withdraws to the log cabin where we can stay for the night. ‘There’s a pretty high hippie quotient here, but otherwise it’s rather comfortable,’ he says and wishes us good night. Boro passes me a full glass of rakija. ‘Martin comes here about twice a year, like clockwork. Gerard also came back once, something about a girl.’

We’re quiet for a moment.

‘Anyone still painting around here?’ I ask. ‘The war created a lot of demand. People wanted to see their houses again and the artists painted them. Like that canvas with the watermill… No one cares about art anymore, though. It’s not like it was before. Did you know that the smaller Spomeniks were made by ordinary people? Villagers, farmers, grocers, delivery drivers, soldiers… everyone got involved in creating those sculptures. Tito would hold open calls and anyone could submit a proposal. Later he established a commission, a group of architects, artists and planners that supervised the quality of the designs. Abstraction was prized above all else. I personally think the small Spomeniks are the most interesting,’ he expounds, then asks without taking a breath, ‘But what about you? Are you still making documentaries?’ ‘No, after my experience in Bosnia I never made another film. To me, film is the medium of missed opportunities.’

‘Nevertheless, it is a valuable document for us. The only thing we have from that time’, Boro responds. ‘It’s just that making it cost you a lot of effort. You were constantly being corrected by Martin and became disoriented. I can still see you sitting there with that dark cloud over your head. Martin only wanted the best for you. That was your realworld education.’ He strokes the cat between its ears and muses, ‘She has sharp claws and walks on velvet pads.’

‘Did you know, by the way, that the broadcasting company

was here shortly after you guys? They asked the same questions and filmed in the same places,’ Boro says. ‘They remade parts taken from my documentary,’ I tell him. ‘Zelenkovac didn’t make it into their version, but all of the scenes in Sarajevo were appropriated. Then their documentary was broadcast on TV and mine wasn’t. They used all my information and contacts without any shame. When I confronted the producer about it, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about and shoved me aside. My film just wasn’t good enough for television.’

‘Is that why you stopped making films and never returned to this beautiful country?’ Boro asks. I look him in the eye, searching for the right words: ‘What I lost is nothing compared to the losses you all suffered, but it is tangled up with this country. I lost a little piece of myself here.’

The day after our night in Zelenkovac we find the remnants of a Spomenik on Šobić hill in the city of Drvar. It has carved reliefs of fleeing civilians and soldiers. The figures are overgrown with bushes, as if they shouldn’t be there. Jan has decamped to a shopping centre in Drvar to look for a replacement for a mislaid screw for his tripod.

I am left alone and draw lines over the faces. While it is not like this somehow brings them to life, the chalk does lift them up. It’s the first Spomenik I draw on.

When the drawings are finished, I sit down next to one of the soldiers and let time wash over me. It is as if he wants to lay down his arms but can’t because of the concrete casing. I recognize the struggle. I think about the documentarian I once was, the incompetent soldier without a future.

‘You don’t need a weapon,’ I say to the soldier in the grass. ‘Look at what has become of you. You don’t shoot moving images anymore, you draw on walls, engage with people and write stories about that. You’re still making documentaries, but now it’s with the naked eye. The medium of missed opportunities moulded you into who you are. You have beaten the camera into a piece of chalk.’

Jan comes walking up. ‘Someone at the hardware shop was able to fit the right screw into the tripod at no charge,’ he says. Yet, he doesn’t look too happy. He hands me a piece of paper the size of a postcard. It’s a parking ticket. ‘Let’s get out of here, it’s not without its risks.’ We leave the field of honour behind, stifling hot under a cloudless sky. The sun rains a thousand arrows down onto my back and each one brings illumination.

It’s too much of a cop-out to use the Spomeniks as the primary excuse for returning to Bosnia. They deserve better. In a vast meadow in Bajramovići, in the heart of Bosnia, are two standing aeroplane wings, the most peaceful of all monuments: two sweet, elongated faces, a monolithic couple, gatekeepers of an emptiness called the future.

As soon as I’m home, I yearn to return to that expanse. Not to draw on the couple, I wouldn’t dare, but maybe on the plinth, the stairs leading to the unknown. I take my chalk and draw on Jan’s photograph instead.