Tourists seeking casinos and kitschy public versions of traditional culture will greatly outnumber and outspend those seeking authenticity.
(Harkin 2003:583)
Several years ago, some friends from North America and Australia took part in a student workshop in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Having worked in the city for several years before that, I enthusiastically directed them to some points of interest. However, when they returned excited and happy about the trip, looking at the photographs they took left me in silent discomfort of, what I would later find out, is sometimes called ruin porn (Leary 2011).
Out of all the potential sites in Mostar, from the Old Bridge and traditional houses, narrow streets and dusty barber shops, to new bars, clubs and shopping malls, including a semi-ironic Bruce Lee statue, and the excitable and loud people in what I felt was a vibrant Mediterranean town, they ended up photographing mostly war ruins. I wasn’t able to express my disappointment, as their photographs were a fairly accurate portrait of the divided town, torn by the early 1990s conflict and post-war politics of ethnic segregation. However, I could not stop myself from fighting the feeling that this was not all of it; that this was not how I used to experience and remember Mostar.
To some extent, the attraction of Mostar’s ruins is representative of the entire country. There is dynamic and extensive discussion over the wider context of changes that occurred during the war and its consequences. This discussion has not been followed up, at least not to the same degree, with debate on what has changed after the war independently of the ethnic conflict, or how society is experiencing and responding to such changes.
To name just one – the state lost the presence it had previously held in many parts of private life, especially those not directly connected with national interests, for example, in supervising the private construction which resulted in an explosion of informal buildings. As most of these changes were simply beyond the ethno-nationalist focus, their effects and people’s responses to them remain largely undocumented and under-researched.
During the post-war reconstruction process and the later explosion of informal construction (1) there was a profusion of flamboyant and extravagant forms and decorations in vernacular housing (2). After the war, houses were not just rebuilt, they were also radically redesigned.
Almost all of them are decorated naïvely, but daringly, by applying bright colours incoherent with the surroundings, using random elements on façades and generally having unpredictable completion dates. Due to a lack of correspondence with professional architecture, professionals ignore them, while the media register them peripherally, by ridiculing them and reducing them to kitsch. However, these funny, vulgar, brightly coloured buildings cannot be seen only for their lack of taste, if nothing more because they are present on a massive scale which is transforming the landscape.
GAZING INTO THE LANDSCAPE
Two major events are important in understanding the recent history of the country. The country declared independence from the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992, a declaration which was followed by an armed conflict between several local and foreign military formations representing the major three ethnic groups in the country (and the proxies of neighbouring Serbia and Croatia) and resulting in large devastation and genocide against Bosniaks (Hoare 2007).
Besides this devastating conflict, the country also entered into a transformation from a socialist economy and a single party system within a larger federal state to a market economy and democracy within the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, now set as a defacto confederation itself. Almost twenty years after these major changes occurred, the citizens are still preoccupied with the legacy of war and ethnic conflict while post-war perspectives (3) arguably play a much more important role than post-socialist (Gilbert 2006). Considering the large scale of the atrocities that the war has caused, this is somewhat understandable, but still in dissonance with other post-socialist societies.
I was, therefore, more interested in processes relating to post-socialist transformations rather than the ethnic conflict. By taking this perspective, I am interested in processes common to the entire population of the country, transgressing communal divisions and not being necessarily dependent on ethnicity. The houses with which this paper deals are primarily the consequence of the collapse in socialist orders of planning and providing housing and in organising their aesthetics and visual representations.
This perspective certainly does not mean avoiding politics, ethnicity or genocide, given that they play an important role, for example when a house is clearly displaying nationalist symbols. But the relevant question for the houses is not how they were destroyed and left ruined. The important question is how their reconstruction visually restructured whole new worlds around them.
In the early 1990s it was impossible for one to speak about natural beauties of landscape, next to the sights of war and destruction. Twenty years after the destruction ended, it is perfectly acceptable to fixate oneself on ruins, while newly built and reconstructed buildings, which are often drastically different from those erected prior to the conflict, frequently on a massive scale, are ignored.
Yugoslav socialist society created specific landscapes, skylines weaved with massive housing projects (e.g. Alipašino Polje in Sarajevo), the sights of almost gothic industrial facilities (such as industrial zones in Zenica or Kakanj) and gigantic sites of memory and contemplation (Sutjeska, Kozara, Mostar’s Partizan Memorial Cemetery). Strictly encoded with stylistics of modernism and celebrated as such (Kulić and Mrduljaš 2012), most of these landscapes are retreating or restructuring as a consequence of social transformation.
In an increasingly mobile Bosnia and Herzegovina, this transformation became more obvious on the roadside than elsewhere. I chose a peculiar route in the north, formally known as “Koridor”, formed during the last war and is still being extensively used. There I drove behind personal cars, delivery vans and trucks, and registered houses they were stopping over. The road became particularly important for understanding visual language, as the experience of driving in a motor vehicle determines the perception of objects moving in the window and diverts to the signs with simpler references, icons and indexes.
During the rides which occurred five-six times per year, continuously over three years (2012–2014), I photographed, recorded and followed the development of a larger number of buildings interesting for their extravagant appearance. While my personal perceptions here are of second importance, I need to state that opposite to some comments I found in the media or on the Internet, I did not find these structures vulgar or ugly ‘para-architecture’, but rather pretty, cheerful and bright representations of hope and glory.
INVOKING TRADITION, OBUDOVAC
On the local road R462a, between the towns of Brčko and Šamac in the village of Obudovac, there is a private building that initially reminded me of a castle. This assumption, based on the towers that dominate the house’s model, was soon complicated by a Serbian journalist who qualified it as “Byzantine” (Sabljić 2008).
The simple rectangular base of the house is expended on the front-left corner with a circle that resembles a roller shaped tower, whilst on the right there is a smaller square that resembles a cuboid tower. The walls separating the building’s spaces are built in red/ brown bricks and opened with white PVC doors and windows. The third floor partially continues with the roof, which covers the third and fourth floor.
On the central right side of the roof there is an additional tower that serves solely for decoration. The towers have only been covered with simple black isolation mats without roof tiles. Behind the main building there is an additional room, a “summer kitchen,” with its at top, serving as an additional terrace, and an outer staircase.
As a prominent decorative feature, the wall surfaces are interspersed with smaller semi-circular reliefs made of patterned brick similar to those in medieval Byzantine churches. The same technique of bulging brick lines has been used to accentuate floor levels, doors and windows.
The house’s PVC windows and apparent lack of clear stylistic connection between the towers show that the visual composition made a few compromises, which are additionally accentuated with unfinished works. Doors and windows that are only roughly placed in the walls, with other missing works, such as the lack of isolation on the tower roofs and basic construction of the summer kitchen, suggest the project is experiencing financial difficulties.
With its characteristic brick walls, its three towers and complex roof, this is not an ordinary house. Its mismatching towers look confusing, but its brick walls hint towards (neo)traditional churches.
“Traditional” has been qualified with caution since using bricks in construction and especially in decoration is locally more associated with mediaeval Christian architecture, (4) e.g. it could be read as “Byzantine.” However, such a style would never be used in housing, particularly bearing in mind the lack of professional design and supervision in vernacular construction. The relation to the past and to larger nationalistic trends is obvious, but has been interrupted as the eclectic combination of towers, decoration and materials gives the building a Disneyesque quality.
Its reference to Serbian nationalism is additionally interrupted with symbolic interventions. While the local village church radiates with nationalist tones (e.g. the windows are coloured in the colours of the Serbian national flag), the house does not have any national characteristics any more. An older picture of the house depicts a pizzeria on the ground floor with a prominent flag of Republika Srpska entity and an advertisement in Cyrillic with a flag. A more recent picture shows that the new business that took over the ground floor has no decorations except for titles and advertisements written in the wider used Latin script. As the new business only appears to be moderately successful, it is plausible to assume that there was a need to play down the nationalist tone in order to attract more customers.
Of greater interest is a general intervention made in the democratisation of sacral architecture. While more prominent towers seem incoherent and misguiding, the house’s walls are distinctive as regards their decoration. These decorations would be conventionally used in churches, but their usage reads more like folk stories in the online photography community.
Lacking construction supervision, a situation characteristic for the post-socialist context, the designers of vernacular houses are largely free to build whatever they want. Using sacral decoration was probably a part of general ethno-national concept in conveying the house’s style, which was accentuated by temporary decorations (advertisements in Cyrillic lettering locally used only in Serbian, with a flag to seal the reference). But without this literal iconography, the decoration became inoffensive “folklore” and was praised in an on-line photography community for its beauty (5).
CROSSROAD FANTASY, ŠEŠLIJE
Motel “Gajić,” Šešlije is situated on the lot by the side of the main crossing points between the regional roads M-17-2 (between Bijeljina and Banjaluka), and the M-17 leading to Doboj, Sarajevo and Mostar. The complex is composed of two buildings, the main building serving as a motel, located centrally, and an additional building on the left side serving as a shopping centre. The buildings are connected by a joint external room in between; both are modeled as simple boxes on which extensive, mainly pink, facades have been added only to the front.
The main building consists of a ground floor and two additional floors with a simple rectangular base extended by a semicircle in front of the main entrance and connected with two circles on front-corners that define external staircases. The top of the building is covered with a complex roof, combined of several surfaces oriented towards the main roof surface above the front terrace.
The walls on all three levels have been opened with PVC windows and doors that exit onto the balconies. All the balconies are supported with columns and provide independent access to the individual rooms. The external staircases on the corner are finished with additional terraces above the second floor. The building is covered with small roofs that dominate it, imitating towers. The additional building is significantly simpler with only two floors, a more modest balcony with columns, less decoration and no roof. Both buildings are lacking any kind of decoration at their rear side, while the joint space between the buildings was constructed without any protection and is clearly showing signs of dilapidation.
The smaller building, the business centre, is significantly less developed than the main one, with major works missing (visible in the lack of a roof and metal framework that sticks out from the top cover, suggesting that another floor is planned). The main building is missing railings on the balconies, paintwork on the left side, and lights on the second floor. The lower floors are significantly more elaborate than the upper one, presumably as they are more profitable. Similarly, the works at the front of the buildings are more developed than on the sides, while the rear has been completely ignored, thus asserting a primacy to the road perspective.
The visual appearance of the buildings is confusing. With PVC windows and doors on dominant pink walls, a complex green roof and towers opposed to simple columns and occasional derelict spots, it is hard to identify any reference with certainty.
On that note, I consulted the motel’s website (motel-gajic.com) which qualifies the appearance as very marquant [markantni]. While this term was conventionally reserved for good looking Yugoslav men, it leads one to the conclusion that the prime idea of the design was to create something “out-of-the-ordinary” for the sake of being “out-of-the-ordinary.”
This strategy might explain the occasionally random composition of different elements and materials. But it is not the only tendency. As visible on the bottoms of the balconies, simple flowers drawn with a compass is used as a main feature for outer decoration (a larger one above the main entrance to the first floor and two smaller ones on the sides of second balcony bases). My assumption is that this decoration is used to create an association with a compass and architecture as a form of extravagance and good taste. Therefore the purpose of decoration was to impress and attract the drivers’ gaze.
The reference to a castle is incomplete and as far as I could later see, unnecessary. Browsing social media for interpretations of the building I found photographs of the building on Panoramio that describes its visuals as in a “Chinese style” (6). Presuming that the shape of the roof might lead the viewer to make an association with the Forbidden Palace, it was interesting to see that the building received mixed reviews of its style with some of the commentators criticising the building’s kitsch, while others praised its unusual architecture.
However, it is obvious that the building’s visual style does not work hard to simulate (timeless and placeless) China. It serves as an open icon for any desired interpretation while attracting drivers with its extravagance.
INTERNATIONAL STYLE, KOZARAC
The gas station “Mesić” is located along the regional road M4 (between Prijedor and Banja Luka), towards the north-western exit of the town of Kozarac. The irregularly shaped triangular lot on which the object is situated borders with the road M4, the local road to Kevljani and an empty field. It includes a centrally positioned main building and a temporary outbuilding (car wash), located in the right corner.
The main building is modeled as a simple cuboid with extending terraces that cover gas pump isles. A rectangle-based ground floor continues with three floors and a roof construction. The fuel pump facilities consist of two isles, situated in front of the main building covered with terraces that are connected to the main building’s first and second floors respectively, but are not covered with a roof.
The individual floors have similar dimensions, but were built from different materials and the third floor is asymmetrically leveled, with the left side higher than the right side. The building finishes with a simple obtuse roof that follows the asymmetric top line of the third floor and ends with a small decorative metal construction.
The space of the ground floor is defined with glass walls, opposite from the first and the second floor where a combination of red bricks and glass was used, while the third floor was mostly built with white concrete bricks. The terraces above the fuel pumps are not enclosed with any walls or any sort of fences. All the main building walls open with a patterning of smaller window units that cover the surfaces of the ground floor, larger parts of the first and second floor and a minor surface on the third floor. The building lacks any visible decorations, except for functional traffic signs and gas prices on the ground floor and a banner on the first floor advertising “ŠOPING CENTAR (Shopping Centre)”.
Different materials and styles amongst the floors and spanning a large part of the building, that is still unfinished, lead one to the conclusion that construction has occurred in looser, spontaneous phases, probably when disposable income has become available. The mentioned advertisement sign suggests that the first and second floor are earmarked for use as a shopping centre, while the use of the upper floor can only be assumed to be a private area which the owner uses (judging by the shoes left in front of the door).
In contrast to the majority of neighboring houses that are modeled on variations of the Yugoslav vernacular house (7) with the addition of bright coloring, this building is distinguished as a modern building with a petrol station. Its simple lines, rough cubical form and lack of decorations imitate the international style of skyscrapers in the financial districts of large cities. While the style might work on the ground floor with glass walls and simple surfaces on the floors above, it loses coherence towards the top where the style is compromised with practical temporary solutions and in places completely forgotten.
The Former Yugoslavia had a complex relationship with modernism and the international style that resulted in unique contributions. Compared to the modernist heritage of socialism, contemporary Bosnian and Herzegovinian architecture produced significantly smaller volume of responses (for more on post-war modernist responses see Ibelings 2010). Post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina is subject of modernism mainly through corporate structures. This modernism is mediated mostly through the proliferation of box-shaped shopping malls and gas stations, commercial structures that are re-introducing the simple mechanical aesthetics of the assembly line. In a naïve manner, the building adapts the style merely as an architectural language for business and attempts to evoke the environment of a modern, rich city building in a sleepy Bosnian town.
This attempt is interesting as part of a wider change in which houses are displaying qualities incoherent with grim post-war realities. Kozarac is frequently mentioned in the media, mainly for the war crimes that occurred in 1992 (Mihajlović Trbovc 2014). The post-war reconstruction that followed included many flamboyant examples similar to the fantastic forms presented in the Šešlije case. While the visual appearance of surroundings intensively appeals to the whole discord of ideas and images, this particular building defied this trend of luxurious colouring and shapes by referring to the ascetic simplicity of modernism, presenting its vision of progress and business prosperity. The only problem is that it quickly fails in this attempt, due to the poor economic situation which has led to construction taking place in layers.
OTHER NOSTALGIAS, BOSANSKA KRUPA
On the eastern entrance to Bosanska Krupa, there is complex of several objects occupying an irregularly shaped lot, separated from the regional road M14 by a railway. The complex is made of two main buildings occupying the left and the centre of the lot, which are connected by an externally joined room.
Moving to the centre right from there, we come to a large garden with a fountain and a tower on the right-hand side, next to the exit. The main object on the left-hand side is smaller and modeled as a simple vernacular house with a rectangular base extending across the ground and first floor and covered with a symmetric roof. The second building is twice as large, modeled as a simple cube on which a decorative façade has been applied with one surface of the roof leaning backwards to appear invisible from the road. The rectangular base of the larger building extends, on the level of the first floor, with smaller rectangular expansions on the left side likely used to create space for a staircase inside.
As the building remains unfinished, spaces for windows and doors are covered with simple wooden boards and nylon sheets. Both buildings are extensively decorated. The house on the left is decorated with a beige façade and white paint linings for the doors, windows and balcony railings, with the ground floor bottom level covered with façade tiles imitating stone. There is an advertisement situated above the main door stating Pschorr KLAUSE.
The larger building is decorated to imitate a castle. For that purpose, its façade employs stone and brick imitation tiles on the ground floor, balcony and columns’ imitations with two functional columns on the ground floor level supporting the approach cover.
The garden is extensively decorated with various garden features, including smaller trees, a fountain, and a stone table and chairs, metal street lamps and concrete fences de fining the entrance. The tower on the very right side is a one-floor building with a semi-circle as its base and a top balcony reminding one of a watchtower. Its walls are built with stone and are open with simple wooden doors and windows. On its outer side facing the main road there is a street sign stating: Münchener Straße.
Without clear signs alluding to a connection with the south-German cultural space, looking at how the individual buildings have been put together, they may appear vague and confusing. The house located at the left end is not different in form from others in the neighbourhood, but its decoration, the shape of its door and windows, the colouring of the façade and identifying advertisement, directly refer to rural Bavarian pubs.
The largest part in the centre stands out from the neighbourhood in terms of form and decoration. It is a structurally plain model with a complex façade, imitating stone, columns and balconies while hiding the roof, which might refer to a part of a Bavarian castle, but the reference here is looser than a direct connotation.
Finally, the tower at the right clearly refers to a medieval structure, or a part of it, but again, this simplicity makes the reference wide and hard to clearly determine. Therefore, its reference is reaffirmed with the modern street sign Münchener strasse. Other decorations include garden gnomes, fountains, tables or streetlights, which make no specific references and were probably chosen because of their appeal to the designers.
It is clear that sometimes a literal reference to Germany, presented in the randomly assembled complex, is connected to the Bosnian migrant experience. The assumption that the owners were migrant workers in Germany was supported by a number of observations. It was mainly closed during the winter and the spring, while construction works were completed in the summer.
On this view, the complex and references it creates are an exciting counterexample to the traditionalism presented in other places, primarily Obudovac. Longing for tradition, as any nostalgia, longing for “our own better past” (Boym 2001), is tightly connected with collective identities and, often, nationalist ideologies. It can be used either passively as an inoffensive presentation of folklore as “the best thing we have” or as an active demonstration in the symbolic marking of territory. This house defies both of these tendencies as the tradition it longs for confuses the gaze.
By building a whole theme park based on the idea of a small Bavaria in Bosanska Krupa, the complex intimately refers to the past that locally may not be considered as “our own”. Germany is still the place of work and life for many gastarbajteri (8), and a symbol of a lost future for war refugees that were forced to return in the late 1990s. The complex personal relationship of the locals with Germany translates into the symbolism used in forming the house and creating a new longing.
THE NEW SENSIBILITY OF LANDSCAPE
In comparison to the architectural tradition of former Yugoslavia, and the relative success of socialist urban planning and socialist modernism, the appearance of the buildings might seem chaotic, apocalyptic or simply tacky. Permanently unfinished projects leave a feeling of disappointment in empty space; they are indicative of a lack of structures in design, but leave an enormous flexibility to communicate and renegotiate visions via interventions.
The aesthetic quality they brought to the landscape was not only radical (e.g. uglifying), but it was almost impossible to comprehend in terms known to architectural theory, building practice or vernacular housing connected with what Roland Barthes called the new sensibility of vision (Barthes 1979:238).
The post-socialist landscape did not only mean the destruction of the old socialist landscapes and production of new, neo-liberal structures in their place. It also entails the daring appearance of what used to be considered as kitsch, not apocalyptic and certainly not seen as progressive, but utterly unpleasant to the old gaze.
Not as common in the conservative housing of Europe, vernacular expressions have been well-explored in other contexts, particularly in North America where the relative absence of state control in building certain areas created a frame for naïve extravagance (Venturi, Scott-Brown and Izenour 1977).
After the Yugoslav state collapsed, the war ended and disposable income started increasing amongst some strata in society, so it was to be expected that those individuals who recently became increasingly economically powerful would start to project their own designs and images onto their houses. As a combination of personal histories which inspire optimistic visions of prosperity and future, the houses seem like grandiose testimonies.
These simple, literate and open visuals are modest visions of better alternatives for society presented by non-professionals and therefore present an effect of democratisation in a landscape that might appear frightening to those used to the aesthetics of professional elites. In this process of restructuring top down architectural aesthetics by vernacular construction, two qualities seem particularly important: inauthenticity and the post-tourist gaze.
THE INAUTHENTIC POST-TURIST
Through road-driven superficiality and imitation, the non-authenticity in the buildings rises as a quality that is awkwardly celebrated rather than played down. Even when featuring traditional tropes, the visual presentations vulgarly exaggerate and oversimplify, while compositions always include unorthodox mixes of materials, elements and solutions (the use of PVC to describe the traditional in the first case, empty towers, advertisements as parts of the outer décor).
Bearing in mind that any authenticity is constructed (Harkin 2003), the buildings oppose conventional understandings of what would locally be considered authentic by providing simulation. Surrounded by sights of new corporate buildings that substitute the authentic local with programmed consumer spaces (Wood 2009), the in-authenticity of the buildings is a radical answer to unstoppable change.
Structurally, the houses are simple boxes to which iconic facades are applied as masks; none of them are finished, they rather slowly change while communicating with the road. They representations merely imitate, rather than reproduce times or places. As such, houses serve as a cheap prosthesis, with their fantasies luring the travellers to the business located in the ground floor.
When visiting small roadside constructions evoking Byzantium, China, inner city financial districts or Bavaria, one can immerse themselves in the new environment free from the grim realities of Bosnian everyday life stranded between political insecurity and economic stagnation.
Their artificiality and inauthenticity crashes down known landscapes in their small enclaves, while at the same time building new enclaves of meanings, and questioning the ideas of tradition, heritage and beauty. As such, they represent horrid, but more inclusive ideas of democracy, where those that might be perceived lesser taste are allowed to represent themselves loud and proud.
In the four cases presented, it seems that the buildings and the landscapes they structure appear more chaotic than particularly able to represent clear, identifiable icons. Due to ongoing work and constant resemblance to specific elements, they start to look like each other even though they appear to be semiotic enclaves, playing hermetically with their own meanings. This common thread is tied not with particular choices regarding representation, or the theme, but with the impossibility of completion which gives the representations a fluid quality.
The incomplete nature and a convergence of creepy, ironically represented notions of the traditional, nostalgic, fantastic or modern into wider spaces deeply questions wider categories of the Bosnian, Orthodox, as well as what may be considered authenticity, or heritage. As we render Bosnian the sum of elements that we have previously related to the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or connected with this society, the buildings and their wider landscapes seem deeply inauthentic and therefore unnatural. This process is reversible and by their existence within the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they are becoming part of contemporary heritage. We start to construct them as Bosnian, since this is a reversible process.
The proliferation of these chaotic post-apocalyptic landscapes could be simplistically used to illustrate political jamming, slow economic development and/or continuous ethnic tensions that prevail in the country. But the chaotic patterns these fractal landscapes create are much more indicative of global changes, even when they sometimes appear as mockeries of it. Even when they appear in total contrast to the programmed consumer places of airports, shopping malls, hotels or other non-places (Augé 1995), they appear to be part of background noise of the same process, as spaces structured by a commercial function where basic communication is conducted in the language of economy.
Even as these landscapes might seem ephemeral, without structure or a dominant ideology in the first place, they are deeply filled with meanings. These meanings are used to reinforce dominant ideologies at the level of mockery, avoidance, ignorance or abandonment, yet they serve as the detritus of a newly implemented modernity chosen after abandoning socialism. And in this new modernity, playing is sometimes the most radical choice one can make.
NOTES
1. Informal construction was in the context of late socialist Yugoslavia often conveyed as Illegal construction, framing the phenomenon primarily through its legislative dimension, or building objects without permission or consulting urban development plans (Bežovan and Dakić 1990; Kos 1993), but its scale significantly increased after the war.
2. The terms “vernacular” and vernacular construction were in local literature primarily explored through ethnographic interest in traditional housing of specific regions. Respectful to this tradition, the qualification “Yugoslav vernacular house” used later in this text might appear as unnecessary generalisation, but I would insist on using it to describe prevalent model of private housing prevalent in both urban and rural environments that rose from specific needs of Yugoslav socialist modernism. Therefore, the syntagm Yugoslav vernacular house will be used to describe cheap private housing, simplified version of traditional vernacular models built with modern materials and mass produced throughout the whole former state. While the first mentioned traditional models of regional vernacular housing were well explored, the modernised version was systematically ignored due their ambiguous modern, but common character.
3. As these perspectives are to an extent inter-dependent, it is not possible to clearly separate them and it is important to notice that social mobilisations in 2013–2014 (Bosnian spring, JMBG protests) countered a post-ethnic perspective by engaging other political subjectivities (Touquet 2012).
4. Byzantine can refer to a much wider set of works. The use of bricks here particularly refers to the Raška architectural school with the example of the Visoki Dečani monastery.
5. See http://www.panoramio.com/photo/22731513 (1st March 2015).
6. See http://www.panoramio.com/photo/54332001 (1st March 2015).
7. A model known locally as “kuća na dvije vode”
8. As a South Slavic version of the German word for guest workers, the term gastarbajteri is narrowly used for the 1960s and 1970s labour migrants from Yugoslavia to the countries of Western and Northern Europe (Ivanović 2012). Labour migration from Bosnia and Herzegovina after Yugoslavia was additionally heightened by the war refugees in the 1990s and new labour migrants to the EU with a diverse range of skills, but here the term is used to illustrate how the traditionally alleged low cultural capital of unskilled migrants and permanent longing for their “home” society has now been made more dynamic with nostalgic portrayals of the guest society.
Longer version of the article was published at the Stud. ethnol. Croat.,vol. 27, str. 449–478, Zagreb, 2015.
This article is published with the approval by the author.
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