Pope Francis visits Sarajevo, 2015

Part of our Dada Sound project (February 2016) - see more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/dadasounds By Haris Sahacic.

"Papst Franziskus visit to Sarajevo was definitely „the event“ of the year 2015 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Security measures where on the highest possible level and all together created a specific atmosphere in the town that remembers sounds of war very well.

I did not need to do anything accept to hear sounds, that where btw. unignorable, record them, think about the "sound semiotics" of the flow of these sounds and recognize one dadaistic comment in the contextual - time and space - moment and conceptual story behind this spontaneous “sound symbolism” that enabled a short travel trough memories of Sarajevo:

Sarajevo - 1992 ...– ... out of nowhere religions rights came up ... – ... unpeaceful artists started to make... – ... noise ... – ... words of war...

Sarajevo - 2015... – ... church bells announce from the distance... – ... unpeaceful birds start to make ... – ... noise because of helicopters... –... at the end I just glued the words spoken by Papst himself saying: “Mir vama” /Peace to you/ as contrast to sounds that were created (in fact that is my minimal but effective intervention).

This field recording is one collage of sounds that are conceptually symbolizing social and political events of the past of this particular place. To me it was one - probably unwanted - public sound event with one conceptual message. Recording was made from the balcony at the 12 floor of the building; I recorded with TASCAM DR1, the helicopter flayed ten meters from the microphone and created by that this nice multidimensional approaching sound picture. "