Stones Between the Fronts

Melanie Hollaus (director and video artist) and Christoph Lammerhuber (architect and cameraman) have been working artistically for several years on the memorial sites of the anti-fascist resistance in the former Yugoslavia - the so-called "Spomeniks". Over 200 large-scale monuments were erected throughout the country during Tito's reign (1953-80), created by well-known architects and sculptors such as Bogdan Bogdanović and Dušan Džamonja. They primarily commemorate the partisans' resistance against the occupying forces and the crimes of the Second World War, but were also a political instrument within Tito's vision of a classless country in which the population lives together without ethnic tensions. Today, many of these "stone witnesses" are forgotten, neglected or destroyed. The monuments, once conceived as a unifying force between nations, unintentionally tell the complex story of ideologically, politically, religiously and ethnically motivated conflicts that continue long after the end of the Yugoslavian wars (1991 – 2001).

In 2022, as part of their research, Hollaus and Lammerhuber became involuntary witnesses to the devastation of Bogdan Bogdanović's partisan necropolis in Mostar. As a result, they brought selected monuments to Vienna in the form of an augmented reality exhibition. Building on this, fifteen of these surrealist monuments will be brought to life in their uniqueness and with all their ambivalent attributions in the form of multi-channel video installations, a 3D object as augmented reality, and photographs and drone flights by Günter Richard Wett.

Opening: 8.11.2024, 8 pm