Sarajevo 1992-2025. The Contribution of Art between War and Peace, Analogue and Digital

A phygital exhibition about Sarajevo 1995-2025. From war to peace on the thirtieth anniversary of the Dayton agreements is going to be launched between Bari and Sarajevo starting from May 2025, to celebrate this anniversary through words and experiences of many protagonists, from local to Italian authorities, from children of yesterday to the adults of today, inspired by the Ars Aevi project, conceived and realized by Enver ‘Enjo’ Hadžiomerspahić (1993; 2005), as an ideal and value-based assumption for the next exhibition. All started from the ‘crazy’ idea that this anagram contains within itself, with its ethical-visual identity, represented by a logo that embraces the name of Sarajevo like a tai, in a perpetual and progressive balance between contrasting forces. ‘Art of an era’ crossing the limits of time: this is the meaning of the Latin expression, chosen as a (partial) anagram of the name of Sarajevo, graphically represented and described on the website that collects the history of the project and the collection, born as a political and peaceful act in response to the war. In peace-building processes and organizational decision-making, culture and contemporary art have been essential protagonists, as shown since the first months of the Sarajevo war (Corà 1996; Ars Aevi project 2009; Comi 2015; Carolo 2016; Webber 2018; Azzerboni 2023). Michelangelo Pistoletto’s donation of his artworks Porta allo Specchio began a unique model for participation and vertical cooperation between artists, museums, centers and foundations of contemporary art from all over the world (MIMEH 2009), which will find its definitive location in the new Museum of Contemporary Art designed by Renzo Piano in 2005 and donated by him to the City of Sarajevo (Ramović 2006); after a very long gestation (Azzerboni 2023), the executive design has just been presented. Until then, the Ars Aevi collection can be known and enjoyed thanks to the website, the online catalog and a virtual exhibition, a sort of interactive demo preview of the new Sarajevo Museum. Just as art, from 1992 onwards, has been able to go beyond geographical limits in the name of universal peace (Caira, Cavigioli, 2021), so the project of the Sarajevo 1995-2025 exhibition aims to promote intercultural dialogue and peace, as ethical challenges for today policymakers, through an exhibition combining stories and contents, in a physical, digital, interactive and immersive way. To convey the story of the Sarajevo 1995-2025 exhibition, we have chosen to use different digital tools, ‘augmenting’ it in content and space, such as an interactive ‘augmented’ catalog, whose contents are hosted in a special copyrighted application, and an exhibition on ArtSteps, a free platform for the construction of VR exhibitions. Among the available web platforms, ArtSteps is one of the most highly versatile in creating easily and intuitively navigable three-dimensional spaces; therefore, especially after the lockdown, it has been used for educational and informative virtual projects as immersive learning spaces (Fokides, Sfakianou 2017; Cruz, Torres 2022; Garbui, Pellizzari 2022; Piva 2023; Purnamasari, Azhari, Amelia 2023; Kayaalp, Namlı, Meral 2024), for virtual exhibitions produced by museums and cultural institutions (Leonardi, Bonacini 2024), as well as for immersive digital art portfolios, created by digital artists or art galleries. In general, tools such as ArtSteps are now considered capable of transforming art presentation and visualization solutions, even in participatory and collaborative ways (Parsons 2023). It allows experimental decision-making and creative-thinking activities, both in enhancing traditional historical-artistic approaches by creating new interactive and immersive art experiences, and in reshaping solution of sharing and disseminate knowledge and digital cultural artifacts. In addition to being widely used as virtual learning environments, platforms such as ArtSteps allow experimentation with digital and virtual curation solutions. This is certainly one of the most innovative activities that a digital curator can deal with, from a creative and scientific point of view, as it is one of the areas of greatest experimentation that the digital revolution has introduced into museological and museographic practice (Baca, Helmreich, Gill 2019; Cameron 2021; Impett-Offert 2023; Leonardi-Bonacini 2024). Therefore, in addition to the physical exhibition Sarajevo 1995-2025. From war to peace on the thirtieth anniversary of the Dayton, a multimedia exhibition in VR have been created on the ArtSteps platform, accessible by the corresponding QR Code on mobile devices, downloading the specific application, available for iOS and Android, but also from desktop, directly from the web platform. Starting from the images of the devastated urban landscape, from the letters that children of Sarajevo wrote to their peers in Puglia, from the words of the many protagonists, who ‘populate’ the virtual rooms, a ‘special’ place is occupied by the immersive story of the Ars Aevi collection, an experience of resilience and artistic resistance of the art world to war.