Telling Stories

An important part of understanding the city of Sarajevo and more broadly, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is learning about the war in 1992-1995.

Today, I visited the War Childhood Museum and the Genocide Museum to gain a better understanding of the context of the country. I could not more highly recommend the War Childhood Museum - the curation of the exhibit is exceptional. The creator's idea was to collect short stories or memories from now adults who were children during the war, but he ended up collecting one item that meant something to each individual and that further told their stories. I don't want to share the details because I genuinely feel it is something you have to fully experience.

The Genocide Museum was disturbing, as it should be, in order to show the importance of remembering the war so that it will not happen again; however, I did not enjoy the curation of the museum. Perhaps it was intentional, but it was overwhelming. In my opinion there were so many artifacts and pictures and videos and such that you simply could not read every single one, and I felt guilty for not reading every description, but if you did so it would honestly take you 3+ hours. The difference I saw between the War Childhood Museum and the Genocide Museum was that the former portrayed the people during the war as human beings with interests and hobbies and memories, but the Genocide museum I felt defined people by their death - I understand the need to show the reality of war, but I felt that the people in this museum were characterized by numbers (and percentages), blood, and terror. It felt more like reading a history book than reading the stories of human beings.

My reaction to both of these museums had me thinking - what is the power of storytelling. Two fabulous pieces that have informed my thoughts around storytelling include "Teddy Bear Patriarchy" by Donna Haraway, and "The Art of Storytelling" by Walter Benjamin. I have thought a lot about the intentions of the museum curator - why did they make this museum? what do they want people who walk through their museum to take away? and what did they leave out in order to create the message they want visitors to see.

At the War Childhood museum, I felt that the curator aimed to bring people into the stories of people who were children during the war so that viewers could better understand what life was like for each of those children. Something I liked about this museum was that every story was so unique. The only reinforced message was these are the stories of children living through war, there was no identical structure and fill in the blank kind of answer when reading the stories and looking at the objects that meant so much to them as children and that they held onto. I didn't feel that the curator was forcing a point of view on the viewer rather, he put out these stories and artifacts and I believe let them speak for themselves. I also experienced this museum with an audio guide, which simply spoke the stories of each artifact and added nothing else except the year in which the child was born. The audio guide made the stories feel more real to me than if I had just read it off the wall. It felt more personal, relatable, and beautiful. Memories that were being shared. As Benjamin says, the best storytellers are the ones who stay closest to oral tradition, and thus hearing the stories out loud made it feel like there was a child in front of me telling their story.

Contrastingly, the Genocide Memorial, from my interpretations was created to show the horrors of the genocide and the war in the 1990s. It was created to explain the history of the warring groups and to show in great detail the sheer suffering and lack of humanity that perpetrators of the genocide had. It showed people as inhumane animals capable of unthinkable things. A man killing a woman waiting for bread, a man killing a 15 year old boy going to school, or a man torturing someone then laughing. It is important to recognize the horrors of the genocide so that they do not happen again, but I felt it was so horrific you cannot connect with victims or perpetrators of the genocide. It feels as though you're watching a fictional movie or reading a history book from 500 years ago - I felt detached. I wonder too what the curator left out of this museum in order to further his message of horror and terror. I wonder how the museum would be different if the "victims" that the museum identifies, were called "survivors." I wonder how the experience would be different if the viewers saw the faces of perpetrators. I wonder . . .

I introduce my thoughts in response to these two museums so that you will think more critically about an exhibition or story next time you see or read it. Think about the author's intended message and what he or she is leaving out or what he or she is overemphasizing. What is my intention in writing this above?