RATNA ŠKOLA is a project researching the walking paths of professors to give class during the siege of Sarajevo between 1992-1995. Students weren’t attending the schools that were an easy target for belligerent parties and were gathering in variegated spaces of the city, called punkts (points), to meet with the teachers and attend class.
Many teachers were making long walks of about 5 km daily from their home to the different schooling points in the city. Also, students had to learn how to weave in and out of the streets of their neighborhood to avoid snipers and arrive safely to class.
The project is based on the book by David M.Berman, The heroes of Treća Gimnazija: A war school in Sarajevo 1992-1995 (2001) and aims at producing a map tracing these paths and localizing the schooling points in the city. It is an attempt at recovering the memory related to these urban spaces and to keep a record of it through walking. At the same time; these walks crisscross through diverse neighborhoods of the city and along the way different stories of buildings and spaces add up to the main narrative, transforming these walks into a genuine experience of the city’s hidden stories and the development of the cityscape through time.
The project is looking for publishers!