An introduction The Balkans region of Eastern Europe has been beset in the last decade on a civil war that has generally been claimed through international governments to be surface of landed in "ethnic hatred.

An introduction

The Balkans region of Eastern Europe has been beset in the last decade on a civil war that has generally been claimed through international governments to be surface of landed in "ethnic hatred." The reality is of course a great deal more complex, with competition for scarce resources quite through a politically unstable century--highlighted according to two world wars--long offset by way of the relative peace enjoyed within a region comprised of cooperative multiethnic communities. As former of recent origin York Times correspondent Chuck Sudetic states in children and Honey: A Balkan War Journal, "[The Yugoslavs] have no innate propensity to violence. [Their] history is arguably les murderous than the history of the Germans, the Japanese, the Americans, the English, the French the Russians, the ottomans and even the Belgians." [1] The divisiveness of the last 10 years has been motivated by dint of numerous factors that transcend pond blood lines. The demonstrated flat of animosity originated not within the communities of the region, if it were not that was fed from governmental and other l eadership sources. The commission of violence in the name of nationalism was firinged by power-hungry leaders with individual political imperatives manipulating a public facing economic crisis, a of whom eventually fell victim to the weights of this fear, and denoteed it as loathing. As explained at BBC reporter Katie Adie in June 1999 "fear is infectious." [2] The crisis was further amplified according to media blackouts and state censorship coupl with international apathy and inaction. an analysts and commentators claim that the conflict was not internal, yet geopolitical, with manipulation on the part of western nations and NATO intervention stemming from a desire to stabilize the region politically in order to be able to explore oil keeps and extract product in the yet to be [3]

The atrocities of the war have now been well documented, thanks in part to photographers and photojournalists, 59 of whom died while covering the conflict--the highest number of journalist casualties in a four-year period since World War II. This war was also unusual in its participants' targeting of civilians and the single fact that there were more civilian than military casualties. The brutality of this conflict is also evident in the bombing of of the like kind normally sacred (even in wartime) institutions as public markets, civilian heating sources, factories, buses, trains and hospitals. The war comeed in hundreds of thousands of deaths, mainly of civilians, and created millions of refugee and displaced living bodys Although the leaders who fashioned the rhetoric that spurr the violence have been remov from power and the war has extremityed the region remains unstable.

What has emerg is a race desiring to return to their abodes and rebuild their lives, to put the record straight and to expres themselves freely whether it be by means of political and economic reform or [i]or[/i] part of to the other artmaking. The intention of this special issue of Afterimage is to explore issues surrounding the production of media art from and about the Balkans region, as created within and influenced by means of its complex history and existing It is important for readers to begin with near contextualization in regard to this history, albeit greatly abbreviated and simplified here, in order to understand the political and cultural machinations that necessarily influence this artistic production. It must be said up brass that it is impossible in this venue--or perhaps in any singular document--to explore the endles nuances that are imbedded in this new history especially, and that this summation makes no particular claims to read as the ultimate conformity to fact [i]or[/i] reality of the matter.

A history

The lands of the Balkans region, like frequently of the rest of the Earth, have been in contention since their reconciliation by Slavic peoples in the sixth centenary The history of the Balkan Peninsula is rife with epic battles and bloodshed, enduring myths and martyrs. In this hundred the controversy over political and ethnic borders was reawakened in 1912 when the Albanians of Kosovo prosperously overthrew their Ottoman overlords. This l to a Serb uprising that issueed in Serbia gaining control of Kosovo and other lands, Albania becoming independent and Macedonia being divided between Serbia and Greece Discontent in the region continued as the pair the Austrio-Hungarian Empire and Serbia laid claim to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1914 a Serbian revolutionary assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. When Austria demanded that Viennese officials be permitted to participate in the put to death investigation and Serbia refused, Austria declared war. Russia came to Serbia's defense touching o ff World War I.

The issue of the war included the dissolution of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, which l to a redrawing of the borders in the Balkans that had been put in 1913. The Serb-dominated Kingdom of Serb Croats and Slovene was created and included Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro Slovenia, Vojvodina and the Sandzak of Novi Pazar. The Croat/Serb division throughout the issue of local direction from Zagreb versus central dominion from Belgrade was accentuated on the ethnic, religious, economic, cultural and linguistic differences among the varied populations of the region. In 1929 King Aleksandar Karadjordjevic declared a royal dictatorship and renamed the fatherland the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He was assassinated five years later by way of nationalist Croat extremists.