@inproceedings{icomos1996,
       booktitle = {ICOMOS 19th General Assembly and Scientific Symposium "Heritage and Democracy"},
           title = {Ars Memoria},
            year = {2018},
        keywords = {ARRAY(0x560c4b9ff1e0)},
             url = {http://openarchive.icomos.org/id/eprint/1996/},
        abstract = {A view on the history and memory in former Yugoslavia is ranging from victimization through
amnesia to nostalgia. What these opposing positions have in common is their failure to recognize the full
complexity of the phenomenon of collective memory and of the region's history of struggle over concepts
of identity, nation, conflict and reconciliation, and the contradictory lessons of the past.
As well as the other states created after the fall of socialist Yugoslavia, Croatia has deployed national
symbols strategically to promote favourable images of its heritage in "nation branding" in order to create
identity of difference.
Heritage is the best example that in some ways always represents conditions of conflict in space, as the
very tool and consequence of politics. For example, the reconstruction with the facsimile method of the
Old Bridge in Mostar (that was destroyed in war conflict) was an attempt to reconcile the antagonism of
divided city and unify it - what unfortunately did not ever happen. Therefore this "new-old" bridge that
originally represented multinational identity of the city, represents today contested identity of the city and
certainly did not help or enable post-conflict reconciliation. Nation state along with expert community
actually produced "image of identity representation" using heritage as a social-political resource.
There is too much memory on Balkans, too many pasts on which people can draw, usually as a weapon
against the past of someone else. Cynicism and mistrust pervade all social, cultural and even personal
exchanges so that the reconciliation is very difficult. There are multiple memories and historical myths
that form powerful counter-histories of a mutually antagonistic and divisive nature.
Destruction of heritage on Balkans (along with ethnic cleansing) should be viewed as a form of
"construction", which aided in the production of the new, exclusive and mono cultural identities.},
          author = {Uskokovic, Sandra}
}