My Virtual Homeland: The Kapetanovo Diaspora Project
At the centre of this project is a photograph:
an 8X11 black and white photograph of exactly 122 people, a wedding photo. Two
couples sit in the centre, surrounded by their town- Kapetanovo, a small town
in Eastern Croatia. At the time the photo was taken, 1941, Kapetanovo was a
German town of 350.
This photograph suggests a haunting on a collective scale. 3 years after it
was taken, the entire town was forced to evacuate because of Tito’s ethnic
cleansing practices in the region. Looking at the photo now, there is a preeminent
death—the death of Kapetanovo. One of the couples getting married are
my grandparents- Oma and Opa, the other couple is my Oma’s brother, my
great Uncle Konrad and great-Aunt Katie.
Kapetanovo has become for many a virtual homeland, constituted through texts and memories. The texts are rhizomatic, allowing smooth spaces. Texts are the residue that gathers, collects and reconstitutes spaces: blueprints of monuments, maps of the town recorded by a granddaughter, videos with accompanying narratives made by some who have returned. I hope for this project to be a collection of diasporic narratives, from those who have been back, and significantly, from those who haven’t. It is a collection of texts on texts, folded hearts, paper dolls. I hope, from these narratives, holding the wedding photo central, to illuminate the spectre of 1940s Kapetanovo.
The question is: how (or why) do we create a place as home that we have never been to? Furthermore, how do memories of fear and violence contribute to the making of this virtual space? In this project, I hope to explore these problems, through engagement with some of the diaspora that went home, and others who continue to hold Kapetanovo as a virtual homeland. What is the significance of a virtual homeland?
The Virtual Homeland Project: .... Diasporas, places and texts....Photo Key....Citizen Noplace.... Maps.... Monument ....Related Links:...Kapetanovo Polje....Europe Lost and Found....
This is a work-in-progress. The links represent the beginnings of grapplings with texts and representations of my virtual homeland.
I would like to acknowledge the following for their generous contributions to this project: Kathe Davidson, Stephanie Davidson, Stephan Torau, Rosina Schmidt. I would also like to thank Barret Weber and Rob Shields for their help on this project.