White Flag at Half-mast:

Šejla Kamerić’s Monument to the Plague

 

It’s difficult to imagine something simpler and more straightforward: a white flag flies at half-mast on a red pole (column, pylon). The flag is torn, the flag symbolizes peace, while the flag at half-mast signifies death. The peace here mourns itself, it mourns the victims, mourns death. Or, peace is surrendering – it is rejecting death and continues to wave. Or, we are grateful to peace for stopping the dying. Or, we beg peace, despite it being on its last legs, to continue to agitate against war and death. Or, unlike a national or other official flag, the flag of surrender or the flag of peace can be made from any white material: it is not fixed, it is improvised, peace can be made at any time. Or …

How could such a simple figure propose so many interpretations? The artist has condensed an array of meanings to such an extent that they spill into space – public space. Everyone who passes the square is caught in a net of free associations, emotional reactions, memories, fear, grace, humility. European cultural history already features such monuments, many of them erected by the Austrian Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries when Central Europe was prone to a whole host of epidemics of plague. The monuments assume different shapes, gratitude is shown to the Holy Mary, to the Holy Trinity: Emperor Leopold I. kneels and choirs of angels flock towards the Holy Trinity in Vienna, and six saints thank Mary in Maribor. All of these monuments stand in those cities that counted the most victims. The topography of monuments to the plague, if we start at the south of the Empire, includes any number of cities: Osijek, Požega, Karlovac, Celje, Maribor, and spreads radially over today’s Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany, all the way to France. The monument to the plague is always ambivalent: gratitude for the plague’s passing, memorialization of the dead; joy and sadness. Dead human angels reach to the sky in expectation, in the hope of finding a better place. Morbidity and simple, futile faith.

During the times of the plague, Europe was being torn apart by wars. However, monuments to the victims always legitimize one side; the victims are glorified because they died for a higher cause. Peace is not celebrated. Which is why monuments to the plague have an entirely different meaning: they are dedicated to those victims that did not rush into death, they are dedicated to the innocents in war.

All of these pictures are in the air and surround Šejla Kamerić’s monument to the victims of the war and to the sacrificing of peace. There are no angels, but the spiral ascent of the flag brings dead children to mind, the many victims of wars, the children of Sarajevo (to whom there is indeed such a memorial in Sarajevo); the children of Palestine. Red pole, blood streaming upwards, simultaneously recalling violent death and the triumph of life. A white rag, wretched and tattered, hopeless peace, follows the curves of a pregnant woman. Or does it?

Is there anything left to be done with a monument once it has served the memory and prayed for the victims? I think there is: we and everyone who has seen it should uproot it and make our way toward the warzones.

 

Svetlana Slapšak is an award-winning Slovenian anthropologist, classical philologist, writer, historian, and a political figure.
In 2005, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.