CultureShutdown / Solidarity Day
Participatory project in public space, photography, censorship actions (2013)
On October 4, 2012, after 124 years of existence, Bosnia’s National Museum closed down due to a funding crisis. Six other state-level institutions, including the National Art Gallery and the National and University Library, were also about to become permanently inaccessible to the public, isolating and endangering invaluable heritage collections. Responding to this crisis, I co-initiated the platform CULTURESHUTDOWN in January 2012, as an international civic platform operating through a website connecting scholars, artists, and cultural workers worldwide. Today, CULTURESHUTDOWN has grown into a significant voice in the global discourse on cultural heritage, to which individuals contribute informally and on a voluntary basis. Beyond activism, the platform produces multi-disciplinary work that attempts to envision a better future for this war-torn society and to re-imagine, via a cultural dialogue, new modes of peaceful coexistence. Our Facebook site has around 850 active followers, but our activities have reached roughly 25,000 people. The media coverage of our press has received 8,447 media mentions, with more than 40,000 online “impressions.”
In February 2013, I conceived of the global Museum Solidarity Day, which designated March 4, 2013 as the date for collective action: I asked representatives of museums and galleries worldwide to express solidarity with the threatened Bosnian institutions by using yellow barricade tape that I would supply to cross out one work in their collection. With the help of my colleagues from CULTURESHUTDOWN, my public call went global, resulting in the participation of over 390 cultural institutions from over 40 countries on 5 continents. This action was supported by international organizations CIMAM and ICOM. In summer 2013, I produced large-scale banners with pictures documenting the acts of solidarity for the facades of the Bosnian threatened institutions. It is important to note that the cultural institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina are not only the guardians of unique historical and cultural treasures; they also testify to a long history of coexistence in the region. Bosnia’s national museum thus presents a vision of a joint Bosnia-Herzegovina, home to all ethnonational groups and their common history. Artifacts kept in these institutions are important pieces of world cultural heritage and preserving them, we argue, is a matter of global concern.
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Materials: Yellow barricade tape, website, photographs, censorship as participatory action, 60 large banners, 1,000 postcards
Dimensions: Photos: variable; Banners: 100 x 200 cm; Postcards: 10 x 15 cm
Concept and artistic direction: Azra Akšamija
Research: Azra Akšamija, Selma Gičević, Maximilian Hartmuth, Asja Mandić, Jasmin Mujanović, Susan Pearce, Andras Riedlmayer, James Thomas Snyder, Jeff Spurr, Mladen Vuković (Editorial Board of CULTURESHUTDOWN), Sonja Srdanović
Production: Editorial Board of CULTURESHUTDOWN, Sandro Drinovac (graphics, banner production), Dietmar Offenhuber, Sonja Srdanović, Jegan Vincent de Paul (logo), Ljerka Dublić, Margarethe Makovec, Eva Meran, Zdenka Badovinac
Participants: 390 museums and cultural institutions from 40 countries across the globe
Sponsoring: Azra Akšamija (private), with the partial support of the Director’s Grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT
Special thanks: CIMAM, ICOM, ICOM Hrvatska, Association of Art Historians of Croatia, e-flux
Also see: Akšamija, Azra. Museum Solidarity Lobby. Ljubljana: Museum of Modern Art, 2018.