16/05 //\ 18:00 //\ Photo Cluster
Reading with Adisa Bašić hosted by Melisa Slipac
Photography Exhibition
Almir’s Belongings, Imrana Kapetanović //\ Bijeljina, 2024, Mitar Simikić
The exhibition accompanying The Book of Almir by Adisa Bašić consists of a selection of photos that are an integral part of the novel itself. The photo album included in the book was created on the initiative of the editor Semezdin Mehmedinović as an additional reminder that Almir Smajić was a real person who took part in equally real historical events.
The album is composed of two cycles created by two photographers. Sarajevo-based photographer Imrana Kapetanović photographed a small collection of Almir’s personal belongings, which his mother carefully preserves and which will likely never become part of any museum collection. Descriptions of these objects are significant chapters of the novel. The photographs reveal aspects of his former life and at the same time show how the preservation of photographs as physical objects becomes a private act of commemorating a tragic loss.
The second exhibited cycle, Bijeljina, 2024 comprises photos by Mitar Simikić, a photographer from Ugljevik, who documented a family trip to Bijeljina and a visit to the local cemetery. The black-and-white sfumato evokes the unreliability of memory as well as the impossibility of speaking about traumatic experience in a direct, linear way.
Adisa Bašić (1979) has published five poetry collections: Košćela (Nettle Tree) (2021), Motel neznanih junaka (Motel of Unknown Heroes) (2014), Promotivni spot za moju domovinu (A Promo Clip for My Homeland) (2011), Trauma Market (2004), and Havine rečenice (Eve’s Sentences) (1999), as well as a short story collection titled A ti zaključaj (And Lock the Door Behind Me) (2017). Her poetry has been included in numerous anthologies and selections of Bosnian-Herzegovinian and European poetry. She defended her doctoral dissertation on the comic approach to erotic love in South Slavic lyric poetry in 2019 in Graz, and this work was later published in Sarajevo under the title Erosova manufaktura (Eros’s Manufactory) (2021). She teaches poetry, literary criticism, and creative writing at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. The Book of Almir (2024) is her first novel.
Melisa Slipac was born in 1978 in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She holds an MA in English, Spanish, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian language and literature, and a PhD in Slavic Studies from the University of Vienna. Her first book of poetry Ples između zidova (Dancing among the Walls) (2007), was awarded the Petar Kočić literary prize for poets from the former Yugoslavia living in German-speaking countries. She also published a bilingual collection of poetry Troglavi svijet/Dreikopfwelt (Three headed World) with two other female authors (2017). For more than 20 years she has organised literary readings and has been active in arts and culture. She lives in Vienna and works as a language teacher and trainer.
The reading will be held in English.
Supported by Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Kunst, Kultur, Medien und Sport, Stadt Wien, Bezirk Margareten, Bezirk Josefstadt, Bezirk Neubau, Photo Cluster, ÖH and Hotel Korotan.