MONUMENT TO FALLEN SWISS

The Monument to the Fallen Swiss
Do we value our memories in the right way? Many people from former Yugoslavia have found their new homeland in Western European countries including Switzerland. Their coming back to their former homeland, mostly to spend their vacations or holidays with friends and relatives, as a rule meant bringing various gifts for their loved ones. Out of all of them, a small Swiss pocket knife spontaneously took a special place. This multi-tool gadget with its compact design and practical use quickly became a regular part of a Yugoslav’s life. Several different blades, a can opener, a corkscrew, even a pair of miniature scissors found their use in preparing food, on picnics and out-of-town field trips or at various parties thus making the “Swiss”, be it kept in a pocket, a glove compartment or a cutlery drawer, an inevitable part of everyday life. However, many of those getting this tool as a present from their friends and relatives who emigrated lost them in an extremely strange way – by handing them over at airports when going through a metal detector. This is the key paradox of the fallen “Swiss”. On the one hand, they cherished memories and represented personal value since they had been given as presents that had a strong continuity streak through a personal memory of those people who had emigrated also representing an artifact silently becoming a part of everyday life. On the other hand, the break made at a typical place to say ‘good bye’, such as an airport, hasn’t erased the memory of it completely. With the loss of this miniature artifact the memories of people have probably been lost for good, but the memory of it has paradoxically become more apparent.
The Monument To the Fallen Swiss thus revives the array of these people from the Balкans’ personal memories showing the paradoxes of common migration experiences and posing a question: “How do we value our memories?” Before the observer, a figure of a Swiss knife stabbed in the ground outweighs everyday culture and indirectly points its finger at the environment where the question of valuables is raised. The static character of the object presents the halt in time passing and, being a personal valuable reminder, it makes the observer think about the way one should cherish their memories.