The Presentation on Post-Earthquake Petrinja

As part of the Annual Scientific Conference of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore (IEF), with the theme “Banija as Metaphor and Metonymy,” held in Glina and Zagreb on October 6th and 7th, 2022, Mirna Tkalčić Simetić delivered a presentation titled “Tales of Turmoil – the Affective Structure of Returning to the Center of ‘Old’ Life in Petrinja.”

Abstract:

The collapse and structural destabilization of buildings in the central area of the city of Petrinja after the devastating earthquake on December 29, 2020, led to the temporary relocation of many essential facilities to the peripheral container business zone, known as the Center of New Life. While the existential conditions of individuals’ lives were shaken to varying degrees by the earthquake and post-earthquake crisis management, the disruption of vital parameters of urban life through processes of ruinization and relocation left its mark on the entire collective. A year and a half after the earthquake, it is possible to witness the transformation of those ruins in the city center that have been designated as protected cultural heritage. This involves their stabilization and protection through the installation of various support mechanisms and metal roofs on buildings or their preserved parts, all with the aim of carrying out conservatorily guided restoration of the city center. The goal of this presentation is threefold. First and foremost, it will attempt to grasp the temporal confusion caused by the ruins (but also the process of their reinforcement) among many residents of Petrinja, which relates to the parallel occurrence of reminiscences of the period of the Homeland War and post-war reconstruction, as well as efforts to imagine the future of the rebuilt city, which are dispersed in the realm of unrealized promises, deadlines, ideas, plans, and supported parts of former objects. Furthermore, the aim is to outline how ruins-as-cultural-heritage become a site of contention between state-level and municipal-level policies governing the reconstruction process and the needs and desires of citizens, whose everyday lives often get lost in an atmosphere of waiting, despair, apathy, and fear, permeated by the anxiety of multi-decade experiences of overlapping crises with no end in sight. The final aim of the presentation relates to the search for hope in the sketched landscape of despair – where do its sprouts emerge from, how they are suppressed, and in what ways such an “affective structure” (Knight 2021) of the post-earthquake period affects the possibilities and needs for social action among the residents of Petrinja.

Abstract Book “Banija as Metaphor and Metonymy 2022”