{VEM academic-artist residency collaboration: Henry Redwood & Vladimir Miladinovic: // Undiscernible//}

// Undiscernible// is a project that builds on a two year collaboration between Dr Henry Redwood (Department of War Studies, King’s College London) and the artist Vladimir Miladinović. It explores how ‘aesthetic’ approaches to the legacies of war might open up new modes of engagement with, and ways of imagining transitions to, peace. It draw’s inspiration from Vladimir’s use of ink-wash drawings based on archival material relating to the war in the former Yugoslavia, to ask difficult questions about how particular knowledges of (past and present) violence are produced, and what this means for how societies reconstitute themselves after violence. In this project, Henry and Vladimir focus on a series of intercepted cables linked to the case at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia against General Ratko Mladic. These cables were produced a year before Mladic oversaw genocide in Srebrenica, and so form an important part of the ‘proof’ of this war crime and the case against Mladic. Yet, as the title suggests, about a third of the intercepted cables are described in the documents as ‘undiscernible’. This leads to questions both about the nature of this ‘proof’ and the question of the role that this proof plays in contemporary society. Through working with these cables, and in particular their ‘undiscernible’ nature, Henry and Vladimir look to how an aesthetic engagement with this ‘proof’ might open-up a space for imaginative encounters that can lead to a more politically progress approach to ‘dealing with the past’.

words Henry, images Ly, art Vladimir.