Excerpts from SARAJEVO SURVIVAL GUIDE An Introduction

Written in Sarajevo, between April of 1992 and April of 1993, and distributed in trade paperback by Workman Press of New York, this manuscript is part of a multifold project by FAMA, triggered during the siege of Sarajevo.

FAMA is an independent production company that, in the prewar period, worked primarily in audio/video media, buying TV time on state television. FAMA introduced a new genre to TV audiences in Bosnia-Herzegovina--political entertainment--which was a shock for a public conditioned to the repressive treatment of politics under the former regime.

During the war, in the besieged city, under the fire of shells and snipers, in conditions impossible for life and work, FAMA began the conceptualization of several projects with artists and intellectuals. SARAJEVO SURVIVAL GUIDE intends to be a version of Michelin, taking visitors through the city and instructing them on how to survive without transportation, hotels, taxis, telephones, food, shops, heating, water, information, electricity. It is a chronicle, a part of a future archive which shows the city of Sarajevo not as a victim but as a place of experiment, where wit can still achieve victory over terror...

