Initiatives / Experiments / Visions

Anti-monument TITO

Principal author

Branko Stanojević

Profession

architect

Collaborators (team members)

Milenko Stanojević

Project year

2016

Location

Zvornik

Project description

Project for Anti-monument TITO was conceived as a result of a personal and emotional search for a lost sign – a symbol of the time when I was born. The inscription Tito I first saw in the early childhood from my aunt's terrace on a hilltop above Zvornik (Bosnia and Herzegovina). During the war of the nineties it was neglected and destroyed. 25 years later, I look back from my aunt's terrace, the inscription no longer exists, but there still is a petrified memory of it. War footage from 1992, exposes in a split second, that far away, high up on the hill there still exists something reminding to the Tito sign, but the cameraman pans the camera out to the street where killed civilians are laying dead and towards people who are throwing the dead into a truck trailer. It was the last time the inscription was seen. The inscription Tito, visible from almost every street, house, and apartment in Zvornik disappeared. It was not acceptable for anybody; its symbolic capital was dead. The psychological magic of Tito's death forced Mustafa Odobašić alone, to carry alone, in the name of love, 12 tons of stone up the hill Vratolomac above Zvornik to imprint the name of Tito. The absurdity of every war forced me to leave 13 white circles on the remains of Mustafa Odobašić’s inscription, meaning TITO in Braille letters. The meaning remains the same, only the lettering differs. The letter does not recognize nationalism and religion, but a basic human need to understand the world around. "A WATCHING LETTER" becomes anti-memorial now, allowing the viewer to understand the unspeakable. It encourages irony that destabilizes the memory and opens up discussion on how we remember and what we remember. It does not impose meaning, but rather forming a personal and collective responsibility of the individual according to the events that led to the disappearance of many lives that once loved to look at the TITO sign. For those who remember, dots should be located at the same place where once stood the inscription "Long live Tito" (measuring 40 meters in length) and a five-pointed star. Five by three-meter letters were planted by Mustafa Odobašić a worker from Assembly of Zvornik municipality. As he pointed out in an interview with a local newspaper, Odobašić took this grand enterprise only out of love for Comrade Tito and the love for his hometown. The third reason he states in an interview is there has to be a need in “any righteous man” "to leave a trail of existence expressed in long-lasting deed that outlasts its creator".

Text description of the author

Branko Stanojević (1983) is a Serbian architect born in Loznica. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade in 2009. He collaborated on awarded projects as Recognition ULUPUDS, Award Ranko Radovic 2009 and Recognition of the Salon of Architecture in Belgrade in 2009 and 2011. In 2018, he becomes a member of ULUPUDS. At the Salon of Architecture, in Belgrade was awarded in the category of experiment and research in 2014 and 2015. He won the first prize in the category of architectural visions on the competition Beta city 2016-Biennale Architecture Timisoara in Romania, 2016. In 2017, at the prestigious world exhibition Arte Laguna Prize in Venice, he won the first prize in the land art category. He won the award of the town of Loznica and the city of Belgrade for the year 2017. He is the author of the project "Free School is a Free Space" which represents the Republic of Serbia at the Biennale of Architecture in Venice 2018.

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