VENAC / ВЕНАЦ
magazine, 2022 - ongoing
All poems in this collection are found poems and all visual art is found art. They are assembled from text and images printed in “Venac”, a Yugoslav literary magazine for pupils and youth. Persisting through and responding to many layers of turbulent history, “Venac” became a valuable artefact of the past – printed in thousands, the magazine was distributed across all federative republics, spanning languages and local dialects. Today, most of “Venac” has vanished into thin air. This is not unusual, considering the great efforts each of the former republics took to eradicate the traces of their common past. As if overnight, Yugoslav memorabilia was packed into basements and attics, far from the all-seeing eye of its new nations. In my family home, an old photograph of my mother wearing a pioneer uniform was retrieved from the locked-up door of a heavy oak closet:
The same week I found eight issues of “Venac”, pressed under a dusty hardcover of “War and Peace”. In one, between the soft, yellow pages, I found a long-forgotten postcard sending “salty kisses” to my mother. In another, I found physics notes practising light refraction formulas. In all, I found highlights, writings, stars, circles, and signatures. It was clear: “Venac” lived in my family, and I began to believe that, by getting closer to its faded words, I might begin to understand Yugoslavia. With permission from my grandmother, I took her eight “Venac” magazines to Berlin. And so, “Venac” became / is becoming VENAC – a collage, a fragment, a multitude of voices. “VENAC” is Yugoslavia, seen through the eyes of a Bosnian poet. VENAC is my family, cut in time and reassembled.