ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses citizens’ strategies for surviving dangerous wartime urban conditions in Sarajevo, as made evident through their own documentations of photos, videos and architectural drawings produced both during and after the war. In the period between 1992 and 1996 in Sarajevo and in other Bosnian cities, survival became the most important activity for citizens. The inability of the city and the people living in it to function normally demanded that they develop innovative surrogates for the everyday objects not available to them – invented objects for cooking, lighting their spaces, sleeping and self-protection. Using Sarajevo as case study, this chapter examines the importance of citizens’ documentary practices in understanding adaptation to extreme urban conditions and their contribution to the emerging studies on war architecture and urban resilience. Heterogeneous in its materiality, the study relies on the personal and professional experiences of each citizen-author. The chapter thus takes media expressions as methodological tools for reading and analysing wartime urban transformations in Sarajevo and citizens’ resilient efforts in extraordinary urban conditions. The aim is for these studies to also be used for other urban emergencies, such as terrorist attacks in the stable cities, crises due to natural disasters or other phenomena such as shrinking cities.
