Matrix

Context

At the end of the 20th century, during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the city of Sarajevo survived the longest siege in human history. With the backing of the Yugoslav People’s Army, Bosnian Serb forces deployed heavy and light artillery all around Sarajevo, blocking all exits from the city and occupying some of its parts. During 4 years of the siege, virtually every citizen of Sarajevo was the target of sniper fire. Four million shells were fired at the city, demolishing buildings, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, cemeteries, museums, libraries… food, water, gas, and electricity supplies were cut off and communication with the outside world was rendered impossible. In March 1996, after NATO air-strikes and the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, the blockade of Sarajevo was lifted and a peaceful reintegration of the city was effected.

The art of resilience which the city of Sarajevo mastered during the four-year of the siege could offer answers to many challenges facing our civilization in the outset of the 21st century – how to survive disasters caused by nature or by humans and how to overcome fear from threats and terror induced by an visible or invisible enemy. Building Resilience to be Ahead of Fear.

Methodology

The FAMA Team objective is to launch an evidence-based methods of data collection and analysis that provided material suitable for Knowledge Transfer Module supported by visual&text archives:

• Oral history: 30 hours of video material containing 1,096 video interviews with doctors, children, artists, journalists, teachers, housewives, actors, students, innovators, actors, writers, directors... It captured their personal experiences and witness to the events from March 1992 to March 1996 during Sarajevo Siege.
• The Questionnaires (31 questions each) provide a unique insight into life and survival under the siege as told by 4,637 individuals from every city district.

Knowledge Transfer Module

Using the methods of oral history, surveys, questionaries, archival video and photo formats, FAMA Team reconstructed the resilience model and named it Knowledge Transfer Module 'The Art of Survival #2: Ahead of Fear - The Siege of Sarajevo 1992-96'. You are looking at some out of 10,000 existing pieces from FAMA research period 1992-1996, of visual and text evidence of the power of Building Resilience during the four-year permanent threat and different levels of stress on a daily basis. 

All the evidences are structured according to resilience module grown out of the interviewees' experience and as such they possibly present universal models. Sarajevans (in this case: interviewees) created and accepted a resilience model in order to survive (‘We were all innovators of our own methods of survival’ – as put by one of the respondents).

As uncertainties of 21st century risk society are spreading across the globe, we are confronted with difficult questions and choices, and very few answers and options. When looking from this perspective, the experience of Sarajevo Siege highlights capacity of individual and collective resilience, potentials of human mind, body and soul to respond and to survive a major urban cataclysmic event and defy terror. FAMA Knowledge Transfer Module 'The Art of Survival #2: Ahead of Fear - The Siege of Sarajevo 1992-96' it could be depository of human knowledge – where human ingenuity, creativity and intelligence were captured amidst the urban post-cataclysmic realm. It is a heritage snap-shot of faces and voices that have shaped the longest siege in the modern history of mankind. Suddenly, terms like building resilience, adaptation to change, freedom from fear are trending high on global agenda – even though they were tried and tested some 33 years ago by Sarajevans themselves. As such this module is in a position to bridge the gap between fear and hope, and between uncertainty and opportunity by advancing Knowledge Transfer Module 'The Art of Survival #2: Ahead of Fear - The Siege of Sarajevo 1992-96' for the benefit of humanity.