What Does Art Matter? Contemporary Art & Development in Sarajevo: 1996–2005

This article explores the question of whether art has the ability to contribute to development and change, particularly in countries in transition. The research focused on emerging and established contemporary artists who are recognised for the quality of their creative practice in Sarajevo. The study investigated whether or not contemporary artists’ work and art-based projects can be "reframed as non-formal articulations and negotiations of the development process." This article suggests that the comparative study of practicing contemporary artists offers a forward option for development theory and policy.

In March 2005, the author interviewed 14 Sarajevo based artists, curators and administrators. Those interviews served to identify points of connection between artistic practice, civil society and development initiatives, as well as essential conditions of difference. Zlatan Filipovic, a new media artist and teacher at the Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts, explained that making art continued during the war, "it was art that was a response to what the situation we are living in is. Most of what was material for art making, was actually material that was all around us, the ruins, the rubbles, the pieces and fragments of other people’s lives that were just lying on the street around."

In modern-day Sarajevo, the article points to the example of Alma Suljevic. She combines public intervention, feminist theory, communications, public safety, sculpture, performance art and pedagogy. She visits public markets with information maps about minefields in Sarajevo. She enacts a method of performance art in order to draw attention to her de-mining information and disseminates public safety messages to the women shoppers. She sells bags of de-mined dirt internationally as art to bring attention to Sarajevo and builds jewel boxes and places defused mines in their velvet lining for exhibition in the National Gallery. Alma claims that "formalism no longer exists, conventions are no longer valid, art is everywhere and it is critical to the development of society."

Full transcriptions were produced from the 14 interviews conducted. All interview subjects were either artists, curators, art students or arts administrators. A systematised analysis of the transcripts was done including a word frequency count. The most frequently used words were extracted from the interview and re-interpreted within the larger contexts of development, communications and globalisation theory. The word frequency aims to reveal concepts that are shared across domains, highlighting what is frequent and what is not.

According to the article, the results of the text analysis support the argument that contemporary art practice in Sarajevo can be a protocol of communication, a tool of social reconstruction, and an informal apparatus of development. The results of the field study in Sarajevo indicate that contemporary artists engage in dual processes of personal practice alongside the creation of a conceptual dialogue with the public. According to the article, contemporary artists are a community of practice that engages in a bottom-up process of social reconstruction and healing in post-war Sarajevo.

The author proposes that contemporary art and development research is relevant because of its connection to social processes. At the same time art is a form of communication that can gain and focus attention on an issue. The article further proposes that more research about contemporary art and development will increase understanding and opportunity for art to be recognised as an agent of social change, though this recognition will only be valid as a forward option for development theory and practice if the contemporary arts community is able to achieve this recognition based on their own terms and the value of their individualised practices.