SARAJEVO - A walk in the everyday life

"A walk in the everyday life" is an ongoing project which aims at documenting the interaction of global and local flows in urban and social settings historically and traditionally not associated with large-scale dominant contexts.

Through the use of visual, aural, and written means, I carry out this analysis in order to take the reader out of the beaten path of mainstream touristic trails. In this sense, the main goal is that of shifting the focus towards city areas which are often ignored, fall victim to gentrification, or lack adequate financial and social support. Nonetheless, they retain very peculiar and distinctive traits of their own.

This short work focuses on Sarajevo (BiH), a city whose personality has been always directly influenced by and intertwined to its complex history and geographical position. Today, Sarajevo is in the Balkans a leading and iconic capital. Nonetheless, it finds itself at a difficult crossroad between both Western and Eastern constructs; caught between modern, foreign, and secular influences, and strong, traditional ethno-religious belonging.

In this work, I touch on such issues exploring lesser-known parts of Sarajevo, roaming secondary streets and alleys. Just like the river Miljacka flows across the city on a East-West direction, I follow a similar route starting my journey at the Yellow Fortress and ending up in the Grbavica neighbourhood. Therefore, I also symbolically experience the flowing of time as I keep moving onward, through the legacy left by the multiple dominations which shaped Sarajevo in modern History.

From this perspective, Sarajevo's cityscapes and soundscapes become the primary source for the representation and investigation of the various urban layers as seen through the lens of modern everyday living. Therefore, still images, field recordings, and personal written accounts, come to constitute the three main elements of a homogeneous narrative. Just like the multifaceted personality of Sarajevo, together they complement each others in order to raise awareness and interest in developing alternative and unique pluri-sensorial interpretations of the city.

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