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Reports

New Monument reports
up to June 10, 2006
to relations / Kulturstiftung des Bundes

On September 15, 2005, the SCCA submitted a request for temporary installation of the “Monuments” to the CentarMunicipality – Utility Services Office.

The request consisted of:

  1. Official letter with the list of names of awarded authors (selected by the Jury), titles of their works, material the monuments would be made of, individual dimensions and indications of locations which the permit was sought for.
  2. The attachments comprised:
    • Reproductions of the sketches of Monuments,
    • text of the competition published in daily press
    • text of Jury’s decisions

On October 17, 2005, first written intervention submitted, urging the relevant service to respond to the request. Dunja Blažević (SCCA) requested a meeting with the Mayor of the CentarMunicipality.

On October 27, 2005, a meeting with Mayor, Mr. Bećirević took place. A copy of the material previously submitted to the relevant service of the CentarMunicipality was handed over to the Mayor. The Mayor convinced us that official response would follow in due time.

From November 2005 to April 2006, SCCA urged the municipal services to send their response – to no avail. The Mayor’s Office suggested to us to contact various municipal services and offices, where our request was allegedly kept.

In April 2006, the SCCA lawyer started searching the SCCA request, from the registry office, where the request was officially submitted on September 15, 2005, to the offices where the request was “processed”.
We succeeded to track down the request, and offered an oral warning made by the SCCA lawyer that SCCA would file a law suit for “silence of administration”.

On May 25, 2006, we received the first letter, i.e. a copy of the official letter, signed by the Mayor of Center Municipality, Mr. Bećirević, sent to the Administration of the City of Sarajevo, together with our letter of request. On that same day we contacted the Deputy- Mayor, Mr. Predrag Mitrović, requesting his confirmation of the receipt of the letters. He informed us that our file had arrived to the City Administration and that it was held in the Utility Services Office. He also informed us that the procedure was the following: the a/m service processes the file and forwards it (with its opinion – either positive or negative – attached) to the Mayor of the City of Sarajevo, who then forwards it further to the City Council to decide upon the request. In case of positive response, the City Administration sends its conclusion to the Urban Planning Service of the municipality in which the permit was requested, to give their approval.
Two pieces of information arrived from the City Administration. According to one, the first forthcoming session of the City Council was scheduled for the end of August, (the last was held on May 27, and there was not time to include the request to its agenda) According to the second information, there is a possibility to have a Council session by the end of July.

From May 27 to June 1, we contacted the Deputy-Mayor Mitrović  (responsible for culture and education) and Assistant to the Mayor Hamdo Karić (in charge with utility services). Their suggestion was that we should amend our request for the Council session with the proposal of alternative locations for all three monuments. We requested in writing to meet the Mayor, Ms Borovac, and we set up a meeting on June 7 with the Chairman of the City Council, Mr. Ivanišević.
Originally, we requested from centre Municipality to issue a temporary permit for the installation of the monuments, however, the entire course of events led to the procedure of making a request for permanent installation.

Dunja Blažević
Director of the SCCA

Sarajevo, June 2006

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
CITY OF SARAJEVO
CITY COUNCIL

No. 01-03-132206
Date July 27, 2006

SarajevoCenter for Contemporary Art
Ms. Dunja Blažević

Honorable Ms Blažević,

I am pleased to inform you that the City Council of the City of Sarajevo considered on its session held on July 25, 2006 an initiative of the Chairman of City Council of the City of Sarajevo Mr. Marin Ivanišević, which included a request for the support of the City Council for installment of three contemporary monuments. These three monuments won a public competition and were selected by an international jury. The whole project has been supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Open Society Foundation BiH.

The City Council has unanimously supported this initiative, thus the project will be realized in whole according to the Decision on Conditions and Procedure for Installment and Movement of Monuments important to the City of Sarajevo (Official Gazette of the Sarajevo Canton, No. 05/06)

Respectfully Yours,
President of the City Council
Marin Ivanišević

Ms. Semiha Borovac
Mayor of the City of Sarajevo
3 Hamdija Kreševljaković
71000 Sarajevo

Sarajevo, October 12, 2006

Dear Madam,

I am addressing you in relation to the recent decisions made by the City Council (September 26, 2006) regarding the locations for three new monuments, realization of which is the final part of the 2-year long “De/Construction of Monument” Project realized by  the Center for Contemporary Art, Sarajevo, and supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, as part of the Project relations, and the Open Society Fund of BiH.

Mr. Hamdo Karić, your Assistant, informed me by phone after the Council’s session about your proposal of locations (the construction site of the future Modern Arts Museum Ars Aevi), accepted by the majority of councilors.
Administratively and operationally, it has created a completely new situation and brought the whole process of harmonization of locations and acquisition of necessary documentation to the very beginning.

I wish to remind you that: at the meeting of July 31 I presented you the regulatory plan for the locations done and agreed upon by the Institute for Urban Planning of the Sarajevo Canton (as part of the necessary documentation to obtain the location permit). On that occasion you have informed me that the councilors’ initiative to accept the donation from the Center for Contemporary Art, Sarajevo (the Council session held July, 25), was not valid since the approval for locations had not been presented to the councilors so that a duly prepared proposal needed to be submitted again, as a new item of the agenda, for the next Council session (September 26, 2006). Meanwhile, Mr. Jamaković, the Director of the Institute for Urban Planning has submitted his opinion, same was done by Mr. Buljina as well, and we have obtained the excerpts from the land registers for the said locations. We have also collected all the legally prescribed documentation for issuance of physical planning permits.
Mr. Karić, who is in charge of the preparations of the relevant materials for the last session of the Council, had all the necessary documentation, which, certainly, required also your approval. However, the proposal you presented to the Council on September 26 was totally new both for us, as the carriers of the whole work, and for other protagonists of the proposal development.
I have no doubts that your initiative is both motivated by good intentions and that it is quite logical at the first sight. However, it has turned out later that the whole process got substantially complicated for several reasons.

  1. At the meeting initiated by Mr. Karić with Mr. Hadžiomerspahić, the Director of the Ars Aevi Foundation and myself, and held October 4 2006, no agreement was reached. (Mr. Karić has detailed information on the arguments made by both parties.)
  2. A compromise was found for the monument by Braco Dimitrijević at the meeting with Ms. Kaljanac, Director of the HistoricalMuseum, summoned by Mr. Karić the following day. This proposal, I assume, also requires your approval.
  3. For the other two monuments there has been no solution so far, except the proposals and approvals made / obtained earlier.
  4. As you have been informed, the grant for realization and construction of the monuments has a time-frame. Namely, the Program relations, supported by the German Foundation for Culture is being closed and we were obliged to transfer the funds from the donor’s account to that of the constructors of the monuments not later than  October 1, 2006. The works are under way.
  5. The date of inauguration of monuments is November 18, 2006. It is the latest and final deadline for our German partners.

Right now, we are completing the Opening ceremony program with the participation of two parties. On this occasion, we would like to extend the official invitation to participate in the Program to you, since this donation is a gift to the City of Sarajevo and you are the City’s leading figure.

Due to all the above-mentioned, I wish to most kindly ask you once again to receive us in the next couple of days, together with Mr. Karić who is doing everything in his power to resolve the problem so that, hopefully, we would find an urgent solution and thus convey a positive message to our public about the cooperation between the non-governmental and governmental sectors.

In expectation of your prompt response,

With respect,

Dunja Blažević,
Director of the Center for Contemporary Art, Sarajevo