Text for Mostar Document by Tom Ryan

Mostar and Stari Most have concerned me since a friend spoke in October 1993 of a white bridge in Mostar about to be destroyed as a consequence of the war going on in Bosnia Herzegovina.

I read papers on the 10^th of November and saw with dismay and regret, that Stari Most had fallen. This was the reason for my journeys to Mostar. Since March and April 1992, I wished to be able to give some assistance to help stop the collapse that happened. The loss that took place was terrible. The first art installation about the conflict was Stilled Lives Closer Now presented in Limerick Civic Centre, May 3^rd 1993. The late City Alderman Jim Kemmy, Member of Parliament, assisted its opening. The work was an attempt to say that European and E.U. leaders had a historic responsibility to help bring an end to the suffering ordinary people experienced. It tried to say something about the attack on women and asked that ordinary people not be abandoned.

Charitable people from Ireland allowed me assist and with them I began the first journey to Mostar. I understand that with other items, they brought in the first refrigerated meat to have been eaten in the east of Mostar in 15 months. On the first night there in October, 2 anti aircraft shells burst above us. It was not possible to imagine how people survived when tens of thousands of shells poured in on their area during the first and second sieges in Mostar. During our stay shells went off over head each night and morning like some pattern. The place was littered with spent cartridges and war debris. Dusty shattered buildings stood along streets that had been front lines in the fighting. It is impossible to describe ones feelings looking at the front of a building that has been eaten away by bullet fire. I witnessed the terrible absence of Stari Most at the site where it once stood and understood peoples sense of loss. I made photos of the place and the people crossing the ‘Indiana Jones 2 Bridge’, put up in its place. We saw 8 open graves ready as we drove away from Mostar, there was still fighting with Bosnian Serb forces in the hills behind the east of Mostar at this time, this went on until October 1995.

Young people clamoured the visitors for sweets, bon-bons. Their teeth were in a wretched state offering visitors some glimpse of the hardships their parents dealt with whilst caring for the young. That October I passed the wreck of the high school in Donja Mahala, blown apart.

We were let know that as visitors, we were fortunate, because on the day of our entry, The Spanish Battalion in the region had apparently for the first time taken up independent check point duty on the access to the east of Mostar, under EUAM administration. The European Union following the official cease-fire since March 1994, ending harsh fighting between Croats and Bosnians established this in Mostar. Commandant Ray Lane had prior led EU representation in Mostar in 1993, doing much with his team to create conditions where it was possible for the adversaries to first speak and then work and negotiate together even during hostilities. He also stood on Stari Most with others to compel tank crews intent on finishing the bridge, to withdraw. A month after he was posted to Gorni Vakuf, Stari Most was destroyed by tank shellfire.

I will always remember with thanks the decent people in Donja Mahala, who showed kindness to me between 1994 and 1996. I can only remember kindness in all my visits and stays with them. We had not an idea of each other’s language but there was understanding.

Having given them the installation Soul’s Journey in December 1993, Amnesty International asked for an artwork to be put where they were doing work during December 1994. I did a work in their display area, dedicated to Stari Most, its builder Miymar Hayruddin and to those who crossed the high arch during the span of its existence. Thousands of small white star shapes represented its going back into the firmament when it crashed toward the Turquoise Neretva. They represented humanity as part of the cosmos.

May 1995 was a bad time in Bosnia Herzegovina. People were being killed all across the country. People in the enclaves: Bihac, Zepa, Gorazde, Srebrenitza, were being brought under more deadly pressure. There was a fearsome massacre at the Kapia in Tuzla taking the lives of 72. The loss to young people in this community was unbearable. People were tracked and hit by snipers in Sarajevo daily. Deadly shell drops went on across the country. A Bosnian government minister and the crew of a helicopter died when a shoulder launch rocket struck the aircraft over the Bihac enclave. In a sign of compassion, the congregation of a church in Herzegovina was asked to pray for the minister’s family and relatives of the crew. Three died in Mostar in mortar shelling the week I visited. Several more grenades fell on the town. I saw the look of despair on a woman’s face as she approached and passed me along a lane one evening as 6 Anti Aircraft rounds burst over head. She was remembering the relentless shelling that happened in 1992/3. During a week in May I was visiting and had travelled to Mostar with a group of women going to Sarajevo.

I had spent time in the east of Mostar trying to see if I could be of help. I had also brought 700 letters by children for an Irish peace institute. I gave half to some of the people going on to Sarajevo, who kindly gave these to teachers there. I gave the 350 to staff in the orphanage in Zalik. No one was at the orphanage on my first visit. Next day they explained they had been warned of possible shelling. I made photos during the stay. On the night we all arrived to Mostar, recorded two 5 year olds at play as a crowd of us looked on waiting for the all clear during a mortar attack, the children were laughing at bubbles one of them was blowing. I discovered 3 years later that another person an elderly woman I photographed was killed in a mortar attack during 1995.

I met some people who returned from the journey to Sarajevo. 3 of us decided to travel to Zagreb after concluding we could do little where we were. There was an anxious night bus journey to Zagreb, during which the 2 women travelling with me were given a lot of verbal abuse from a young man in uniform on a bus of nervous people. It was a sleepless night. A retired teacher met and guided us to lodgings and company. She lived then in Zagreb, but had spent a life teaching in Vukovar. Anna had lived in a basement, as did many, during the 3 months of siege there. Anna said of that time: ‘All we dreamt and prayed for was sunlight and water’.

TV images of that week in May 1995 showed unhappy captured UNHCR personnel, handcuffed to communications pylons across Serb held territory. That act was a dangerous gesture.

We left the region shaken and worried for people we had befriended, both visitors and those living in Bosnia Hercegovina. I remember Alison and a number of others who were kind in difficult times.

During the following months I fund raised. After an effort 9 tonnes was gathered, between clothes, books in English and some disposable nappies and sanitary towels. That summer with help from children in Southill and The Project School Limerick, the art installation ‘Twin Rivers’, linking in spirit the rivers Shannon and Neretva, was presented at Arthur’s Quay. We were doing a fundraiser in the second week of July 1995, as news came to us about Srebrenitza and shortly after, Zepa. We knew things were really bad. It is well to remember those who assited the effort. St Vincent de Paul in Hospital, Co Limerick, The Limerick County Managers Office, The County Librarian and Limerick County Libraries, Maria Falvey O'Brien, The Limerick County Arts Office, Amnesty International, John Lannon, Martin Walsh, and other members, Limerick Newspapers, Anthony Galvin, Aidan Corr, Dymphna Bracken, Eugene Phelan, Ron Kirwan especially from this time, 1995 and 96. The Baha'i singing group Village Earth twice obliged with help, others making a contribution included Ausin Durack always willing to give time and effort, Micky Dunn, Bat O'Connor, Niall McCann, Michael Henchy, Noel Kelly, Joe Harrington, John Granville, Brian Mitchell. Jim Kemmy Mayor of Limerick attended the event held at Limerick City Gallery in July 1995 as did the Principal of Galvone B.N.S. and his wife. At The I.C.O.S. Box Factory Galvone there were, Gerry Ryan, Ger O'Connor, and Michael from Herbertstown. One recalls that the Umbrella Project recently formed and gave a Saturday to do drumming raising a substantial contribution which helped get materials across to Sarajevo for Winter 1995.

These people gave material and contributions making it just possible to keep up contact with BiH during 1995 and 1996 leading to more work being possible later. Thanks to these and the many more who in difficult times made things seem less harsh.

I went briefly to Mostar in September, with a man driving from England with children’s musical instruments. I was pleased to assist having seen the startling transformation that came over dispirited children in a shelter for refugees in Zagreb in May 1995, when they heard a woman travelling with me commence playing a trombone. On our arrival to Mostar in September, we helped collect British music professors and an accountant from Split airport to Mostar, they were going to work at The Pavorotti Music Therapy Centre. Whilst we stayed I gave someone a drawing for the Mayor in the east of Mostar and showed two others I hope to do more work on in Mostar. I also gave the person a letter to be delivered from then Mayor of Limerick Alderman Jim Kemmy, Member of Parliament, to the Mayoralty of Mostar in support of Councillor Joe Harrington’s request to Twin Limerick and Mostar, a proposal I had recommended. We left Mostar in a couple of hours, heading for England, where I realised my drawings were mislaid.

I paid a ferry so a lorry from England could collect the material collected for BiH in the area around Limerick City. That week, vandals destroyed a work unit beside me. The fire destroyed another unit and put lots of smoke in mine. Next day thugs surrounded me for I guess forty minutes after I pleaded with young girls to please leave alone disposable nappies, which they were taking as the damage was assessed. Eventually the thugs stole something and ran off. Friends came after work and we rebagged 4 tonnes of clothes and made the rest safe. Much of the material disappeared without explanation whilst I collected material from a friend in Oxford, after reaching England before heading with a group to Sarajevo where I stayed for 7 weeks in the winter of 1995-96. I did note that disposable nappies and sanitary towels did reach those for whom they were intended. In 1997, I organised that a donated crate of books in English was brought to Mostar by an Irish charity. I saw it in Mostar and was told The National Library was interested in the books. Most of the time during that stay in 1996 I was in rooms at the Vatrogas Profesionala with a committed colleague from London. I visited Gorazde and Mostar twice each. In Gorazde I met the UNHCR Field Office the brave Eddie O’Dwyer, who took care of people in the bad times, for over 3 years. The last time we met In 1978 we used be in school together. British Officers with UNHCR Transport were very decent in helping with travel. On the return from Mostar in January, a regular bus travelled over Mount Igman on snow and ice. I recall the conductor resignedly seeking an elusive slip of paper, a permit that allowed the bus past a checkpoint. They had driven a bus the frozen mountain track after helping clear dangerous traffic stoppages to be stopped temporarily by a slip of paper. On the first visit back to Mostar since September 1995, in January 1996, I found the 2 missing drawings on the office wall of a charity that I visited.

The professional firemen stationed at Skendaria were very quick to respond to a fire call out. They had been very quick and had taken terrible risks to save people and buildings during the siege of Sarajevo. During the siege of Sarajevo, the professional firemen were a specific target of snipers. It was a poignant experience being with them as they celebrated New Year 1996. The shift on duty responded as quickly as usual to 2 call outs that night, like any other time. This was the first New Year after Dayton, and as people wondered would the cease-fire hold there was a sense they had come through a nightmare.

I stayed with people in the new part of Sarajevo later in January and brought news for them from Gorazde, the first about relatives there for 3 years. This was the length of time schools were without heat or light. The charity I was lending help to sent in some donated children’s parcels. Jim the manager with whom I worked enjoyed giving such parcels to young people as it was in the spirit of giving.

I cracked a bone hopping off a ledge to meet UNHCR early one morning in February 1996, because I was avoiding waking a mother and young child, with whom I was lodging. I didn’t admit the obvious and kept my appointment. I managed to keep up appearances and continued to Mostar on a follow up visit to an earlier meeting, facilitated by Beth, a person I met on the May 1995 visit, to deliver a proposal to EUAM about doing the artwork Star Bridge in Mostar. I delivered this on the morning Oswald Shreoder Head of Department of Youth, Sport and Culture with EUAM, opened The Centre of Culture in Mostar. I was taken care of by the very kind woman in Donja Mahala for 5 nights before finding a lift with a French charity to Sarajevo, from where I went by truck to England and flew back to Ireland to recover. It was the morning Hans Koesnich Head of the EUAM was assaulted during a speech. Next morning before I left Sarajevo and Bosnia Hercegovina, I made photos of the snow-strewn insides of The National Library.

Thanks to Limerick County Arts and Library Services, I presented a first exhibition after returning. Library of Dreams – Bridge of Hope was presented at Adare Library in May 1996, and was kindly opened by Ms Zlata Filipovic, the writer of Sarajevo Diary, who during the siege was rescued with her family and brought via the U.N.H.C.R. to Ireland.

The playwright, Mike Finn supported the proposal to prepare Star Bridge first in Limerick. John Hunt who had begun preparing The Custom House Limerick for the Hunt Collection, heard of plans and provided financial help. The Belltable Arts Centre approved my application to show Thresholds an exhibition due to feature work about The National Library. Sonia Zamikides and Roeland Van Elsen joined Mike and Primary School Principal Eileen Kennelly as part of the team preparing the project. We organised a conflict resolution programme, I thought of visitors from neighbouring planets arriving accidentally to the same school. They were in conflict over the loss of a star bridge between them. It the ensuing play children learnt about conflict and they were told about Stari Most and were asked would they like to contribute to the work by placing a hand print on each of the white stars. Mike and Eileen performed this in 9 Schools in the area. During this, 4,000 stars shapes were signed by 2,834 young people in Limerick and Sonia returned from Mostar with 200 from children there and a message: vratiti nam Stari Most, give us back Stari Most.

In Spring 1997, I arranged with The chairperson of the Amputee Association of Ireland working with personnel at Dun Laoighre, to send a delivery of components for assembling prosthesis to a Dr Kapic in Sarajevo, helped by a colleague in The Health Board, and colleagues in England.

During preparation for the exhibition to accompany the Star Bridge Artwork being presented on the O’Halloran Bridge beside The Hunt Museum, an art expert intervened at short notice with ideas of his own, causing me to relocate a large component of work intended for installation and exhibition at The Hunt to the Belltable, where it was rationalised with work about The National Library. John Hunt opened ‘Thresholds’ at the Belltable Arts Centre, with a contribution from The Chairman of the Belltable. During its exhibition, 4 pages of helpful intelligent observation were entered in the visitor’s book and ‘Thresholds’ received 2 affirmative national press reviews. Further work was later exhibited in The Hunt Restaurant during August whilst the Star Bridge was in place on the Abbey River beside The Shannon outside.

Roeland prepared bridge plans, Mike convinced The Umbrella Project to assist with preparation of stars. A friend in Wexford thought of using nets on which to tie the stars as I discussed the project with him. I commissioned music and song about cultures meeting for the first time and of having lived together to discover themselves apart. Colm O’Snodaigh and Enis Sipovic performed the ‘call and response’ across the Abbey River across a darkened artwork at night fall using Irish and Bosnian representing the idea of people from different cultures meeting for the first time, offering words of greeting to one another. Yemanja in Dublin, were asked to develop a piece about cultures connecting using 7 languages sung in 7 modes reflecting the colours of the rainbow and the many different peoples that met over the arc of Stari Most during the more than 4 centuries of its span across The Neretva. The words for the song were based on descriptions the traveller and writer Evliya Celebi gave of his first sight of Stair Most the lines used were: ‘Like a rainbow riding up to the milky way’; ‘Like a white arc leaping from sheer rock to sheer rock‘. Eamonn Hehir and James Hanley prepared Eamonns commission about loss and survival. Eamonn helped prepare a 30-second multi track piece I did with harmonic vocalisation. Star Bridge was presented to a gathering of 1,000 on the night of July 27^th 1997. Once the tide came in a swimmer Harry Hockedy drew a barge of lighted candles under the artwork, which was then lit out of darkness, revealing the spirit and ghost of Stair Most. The work concluded with Enis and Colm singing the second ‘call and response’ to one another in Bosnian across the ghost of a bridge, representing people who survived a conflict who wished they were together.

The Cultural Committee of The Department of Foreign Affairs voted to help my work in Mostar during 1998.

Joe Harrington prepared Bridges Between Limerick and Mostar, a CD done in training with his FAS workers featuring the work of musicians in Limerick and Dublin including those from whom I commissioned work. Colm later featured work he had prepared on Lemonade and Buns an album by Kila.

Alderman Jan O’Sullivan, Member of Parliament, officiated at the presentation of a video about the Star Bridge artwork as part of Limerick Civic Week 1998 at the Hunt Museum. The ensuing TV programme was shown in Mostar when we presented the first interpretation of Star Bridge at the site of Stari most between the buttresses of the old bridge in April 1998. Tony Foley then Administrative Officer of O.H.R. Mostar, who followed the EUAM, assisted this work.

I was awarded an exhibition in Siamsa Tíre Gallery, Tralee, and showed Arc of Heaven there in August 1998 a work about seeking Paradice and losing Heaven. Noelle Campbell Sharpe opened it with contributions from Art Historian and writer Dorothy Walker, The Mayor of Limerick in 1998 - 1999, Joe Harrington and Alderman Jan O’Sullivan, Member of Parliament, the Director of Siamsa Tire Gallery and a representative of Kerry County Council. There was a performance by Yemanja. The work was supported by Kerry and Limerick County Councils and by The Arts Councils and Siamsa Tire staff and assistants.

John Hunt, who supported the work, came to Mostar, with myself and Eugene Keily who video’d work, in September 1998. We were there during elections. The Arts Council supported the journey. We worked with Mostaran colleagues who placed Star Bridge - Bridge of Songs on the walking bridge beside the site of Stari Most, where it remained for many months. It was a gesture of good will from people in Limerick and Ireland to people in Mostar coping with the results of conflict. An Irish child contributing to the 1997 conflict resolution programme asked ‘Will my star be in the bridge in Mostar?’ It was.

On returning I began preparations to bring people from Mostar to perform as part of Limerick Civic Week 1999. The undertaking was supported by UNHCR the Soros Foundation and Mladi Most in Mostar and also by very many individuals and groups in Limerick and Clare. 10 young people performed music sang and presented a dramatic interpretation of the situation of contemporary women in ‘6 Parts of me’. Performances took place in a County Limerick library and in Schools in Limerick and Killaloe. The group marched in the St Patrick’s Day Parade 1999 and presented Joe Harrington then the Mayor of Limerick with a white stone typical of the kind found in Hercegovina which would have been used to build Stari Most. I put a representation of Arc of Heaven in place in the atrium of the Foundation Building with help from students and The Students Union. Councillor Joe Harrington, Mayor of Limerick for 1998 - 1999, did this to welcome the visitors during their performance and their attendance at a Civic Week event arranged and presented by the Mayor at the University Concert Hall.

I prepared other art-projects in the following months, titled Crossing Pathway, Reflections Past and Future and Mid Summer Night’s Dream. These were works about Limerick City its people and their different cultures and inheritances, which were assisted and supported by John Hunt, The Arts Council, Limerick City Arts Office and Limerick City Marine Search and Rescue.

Droichead na nAmhrán – Bridge of Songs followed. The project was established to confirm cultural and artistic expression as means toward building understanding between people. It is an exploration of cultural connection as expressed through song and artworks with the ideal that cultural dialogue can link people as they express their cultural diversity. Visits to prepare work were made in September and November 2000. There was a visit in May 2001 when, with assistance from the President of the Assembly of the Old Town Mustafa Hadzailic and Head of the EU Office in Mostar Murray McCullough OBE, schools in Zalik and Donja Mahala were presented with 4 lanterns made by Limerick children. These were signed in Ireland specially by The Mayor of Limerick in 2000 – 2001, Councillor John Ryan. The Bridge of Songs was presented in August 2001. Councillor Dick Sadlier, Mayor of Limerick for 2001-2002, sent letters of support to Mostar.

The August presentation featured an exhibition of the work I made during 7 years of journeys to Mostar. The President of the assembly of The Old Town Mustafa Hadjailic again supported Work. Murray McCullough Head of the EU Office in Mostar lent further support. The Arts Council gave assistance and John Hunt supported the project. During the exhibition at The Centre for Culture, Bridge of Songs was placed across The Neretva, with scaffolding in the background confirming the restoring of Stari Most. 40 minutes of music commissions from Ireland which were part of Droichead na nAmhrán – Bridge of Songs and the earlier Star Bridge were put on CD and with the permission of the authors, played in Mostar during August and September to celebrate cultural connection. 4 new commissions in Irish were provided by Colm O’Snodaigh, 2 pieces, one a commission based on a Motet by Thomas Tallis, were prepared by the composer and organist at St Mary’s Cathedral Limerick, Stuart Gray. Work by Kila features, as did a commission for Star Bridge Limerick in 1997 by Colm, which he completed for their album Lemonade and Buns. There was work by Eamonn Hehir done for Star Bridge 1997 produced with James Hanley. Web sites were used to inform people of the developing work.

There was a presentation at the Mayoral Chancellery from the Deputy Mayor Hamdija Jahic, who, with 200 students later visited the Centre of Culture paying a call to the exhibition and selecting 3 prints for the Chancellery. It was decided to use the children’s models that I designed and built with Limerick Children in an education project first presetned as part of Expo 01 on May 5th in Limerick city. Irish Express Cargo and Cargo Partners of Austria brought these models to Mostar for me in August with assistance from Customs in the EU and Bosnia Hercegovina and its neighbours. In August 2001 here was an exhibition at The Centre for Culture, of photos and drawings about Mostar especially the Old Town administrative district during the years from 1994 to 2000, This was supported by the Artwork Bridge of Songs, presented in August 2001 and placed at the site of Stari Most. The models and material for Filghts of The Imagination in Mostar were assembled and added to and presetned with assistance for the ministry for Education and schols and the PrincipaI teachers of Donja Mahala school and The Special school where the models or big toys were presented to young people in September 2001. The young people played enthusiastically with the big toys. There was a second exhibition at the Pavorotti Music Therapy Centre featuring photographs made about artwork in August, with a selection from the dozens of framed works I brought to exhibit in Mostar. The magazine Most kindly printed plates showing photos for the September edition. Colleagues Zlatko Serdarevic programme maker with RTV Mostar, famous diver Vanja Golos and graphic designer Aldin Kovach, proposed the making of an illustrated book printed through several languages, providing advice. I wish to thank kind people like Tamara who so helped John and myself on our journey back to Ireland with the framed work. The people who helped during the project and on the journeys affirmed the ideal arising from creating work, which was intended to increase understanding between people from different cultures.

Thanks to all who helped, Tom Ryan September 2001.
This is a neccessarily brief account of visits and events. It is not formally composited but is the property of Tom Ryan.

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