Milica Tomić: One day, Instead of One Night, a Burst of Machine-Gun Fire will Flash, if Light Cannot Come Otherwise


  • ©, , One day, Instead of One Night, a Burst of Machine-Gun Fire will Flash, if Light Cannot Come Otherwise
  • ©, , One day, Instead of One Night, a Burst of Machine-Gun Fire will Flash, if Light Cannot Come Otherwise
  • ©, , One day, Instead of One Night, a Burst of Machine-Gun Fire will Flash, if Light Cannot Come Otherwise

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    One day, Instead of One Night, a Burst of Machine-Gun Fire will Flash, if Light Cannot Come Otherwise

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    The title is taken from the fragment of a poem by Oskar Davico, 1925: “Eines Tages, statt eines Nachts, wird ein Maschinengewehrfeuer aufflammen, wenn es kein anderes Licht gibt”.

    Over a period of two months, in the autumn of 2009, Milica Tomić visited particular sites of successful antifascist actions that members of the People’s Liberation Movement and ordinary people, citizens, carried out in Belgrade against German occupation during the Second World War. The photos and video footage taken during these repeated walks are documents of the marking and mapping of sites where these actions took place, actions that are not part of the
    public memory of the city of Belgrade.

    “Today, whether we are in a direct war situation or not, we find ourselves in a state of permanent mobilization. However, is it possible to use armed force without establishing a strict division into the terrorist versus the terrorized? Even if it were possible, such an action would have to be singular and entirely separate from all public opinion, political promises of identity groups, parties, movements or organizations, and would be distanced from the politics of terror and anti-terror. This description of a singular and universalistic position of the use of armed force is very much reminiscent of Partisan warfare, and of the politics that Yugoslav partisans conducted in the course of their antifascist revolutionary struggle, in a war against war – for peace. The action is an attempt to proceed from the position of a rebel, assuming an active position, without referring to the position of a victim, moving from the position of a victim onto the streets, with a machine gun in hand, carrying it simply and with determination, as if it were a supermarket carrier bag or an umbrella.” -Milica Tomić

    Full text (PDF) p. 94-99

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