This work was made during the 2006 Sarajevo winter festival, Sarajevska Zima. I was there with Nine Dragon Heads to make public works and for an exhibition at the Turkish culture center.

I was interested in a series of figurative busts in Svetlost park. I had been visiting this park every day for a week, circling and watching, feeling my way into an idea for a work. I always work this way, its part of my approach to site to walk watch think and wait. I particularly wanted to know who the men in the statues were.

A writer I met gave me an inpromptu cultural tour of Sarajevo starting at the old Army hall balcony; he told me that all the busts in the park were of writers then introduced them to me individually and with great affection. One in particular, a poet, Mak Dizdar, was a favourite of his. (After reading some of Dizdars writing I understand why and thank you Dijan for this lovely introduction to his work.) We spoke about his work and in particular the collected poems in the book Kameni spavač Stone sleeper (1966-1971). Dijan also introduced me to the medievil Bosnian tombstones outside the National Gallery as being the stone sleepers that were a major inspiration of Dizdars work.

The idea for the swan was already developing at this point, but I was still prowling and thinking because it needed to be anchored to the city, the peices still didnt quite fit. I was thinking about monuments and nostalgia already, one of the reasons that I was circling Svetlost park was that it had so many monumental sculptures. My intention was to use the swan as a marker or container for a nostalgic idea; to work in conversation with an existing emotional current, tone if you like, of yearning for better things. The story told to me and the pathway that the story took through the city anchored my thinking onto the place, the individual parts suddenly working together like tumblers on a lock lining up and clicking into place.

The final form of the work, walking with swan: stone sleeper began at the bust of Mak Dizdar and ended at the National Museum. The Swan (labud) was bolted together from cardboard cartons collected in the city, in itself a different kind of document, a kind of stored history in both material (used boxes stamped and labelled) and form (the image of swan is overlaid with many layers of poetic and mythic history). I placed the swan beside Dizdar. For the walking performance I tied the swan to my body with 9 metres of black satin ribbon, wrapped around and around my chest and walked dragging it trailing behind me. It took just over half an hour to walk the distance.

It was an important part of the work that the myth container was also antithetical to the static nature of a monument, moving and of a changing nature, like good poetry.

Materials are recycled cardboard cartons, bolts, satin ribbon, a walk in Sarajevo city. Incidentally, svetlost (the name of the park) means light, which was also the theme of the festival. www.sarajevskazima.ba