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At the centre of this project is a photograph: an 8x11 black and white photograph of exactly 122
people, a wedding photo. Two couples sit in the centre, surrounded by their town- Kapetanovo, a
small town in Eastern Croatia. At the time the photo was taken, 1941, Kapetanovo was a Ger-
man town of 350.

This photograph suggests a haunting on a collective scale. 3 years after it was taken, the entire
town was forced to evacuate because of Tito’s ethnic cleansing practices in the region. Looking
at the photo now, there is a preeminent death—the death of Kapetanovo. One of the couples get-
ting married are my grandparents- Oma and Opa, the other couple is my Oma’s brother, my
great-Uncle Konrad and great-Aunt Katie.

Kapetanovo has become for many a virtual homeland, constituted through texts and memories.
The texts are rhizomatic, allowing smooth spaces. Texts are the residue that gathers, collects
and reconstitutes spaces: blueprints of monuments, maps of the town recorded by a grand-
daughter, videos with accompanying narratives made by some who have returned. I hope for
this project to be a collection of diasporic narratives, from those who have been back, and sig-
nificantly, from those who haven’t. It is a collection of texts on texts, folded hearts, paper dolls.
I hope, from these narratives, holding the wedding photo central, to illuminate the spectre of
1940s Kapetanovo.

The question is: how (or why) do we create a place as home that we have never been to? Fur-
thermore, how do memories of fear and violence contribute to the making of this virtual space?
In this project, I hope to explore these problems, through engagement with some of the diaspora
that went home, and others who continue to hold Kapetanovo as a virtual homeland. What is the
significance of a virtual homeland?

This is a work-in-progress. The links represent the beginnings of grapplings with texts and rep-
resentations of my virtual homeland.

I would like to acknowledge the following for their generous contributions to this project:
Kathe Davidson, Stephanie Davidson, Stephan Torau, Rosina Schmidt. I would also like to thank
Barret Weber and Rob Shields for their help on this project.

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