Sarajevo Under Siege. Ivana Macek

musicians, artists, writers, and other cultural workers performing alone or together, … anonymous individuals who organized soirées in their residence quarters, cellars, apartments, and backyards, … various types of amateur companies…. Many a foreign artist and cultural worker participated in the cultural life of Sarajevo. All of them came to help. They were there with completed programs, they directed plays, prepared and organized exhibitions, played music, filmed, started collaborations, planned aid and guest performances, and also taught. Over eighty performances by Sarajevan theatres were staged in fifty-nine European cities; painters and sculptors from Sarajevo exhibited in thirty-four countries; musicians performed in all important European centers. Films made in Sarajevo were shown in fifty-two international festivals [during the period from April 1992 until April 1995]…. The cultural activities had the scale and content resembling those of peacetime…. The cultural life of besieged Sarajevo refutes the Latin proverb Inter armas musae silent, “While weapons talk Muses become silent.” In Sarajevo Muses did not become silent. (Trtak 1996:30, my translation)

      In the situation of extreme existential danger, people needed the creative force that the arts provide. By performing internationally to the extent that they did, Sarajevan artists were able to call world attention to the plight of Sarajevo. At the same time it also gave them an opportunity to come out of the siege and reconnect to the normal world, which everybody longed for. Some probably used this opportunity to seek asylum and stay abroad.

      In the town, Sarajevans performed and attended performances against all odds, and every performance was a victory of civilian life over the war. Lest the city’s surprisingly vibrant cultural life convey the misimpression that Sarajevans engaged daily in the production and consumption of art, however, we must note that the significance of these artistic events lay mostly in the fact that they were happening at all and that it was possible once in a while to attend them. A secularized Muslim woman explained: “We used to go to the concerts, to the theater…. I could not go very often because most of them were at twelve or at one o’clock, when I was at school…. It was because of the electricity. They could not give a performance in the evening without electricity, so they performed during the daylight.”