PULP & PASTRY

Hosted at the University of Sarajevo, this collaborative project paired Adam Pantic — featuring his pita making — and my handmade paper with fruits and vegetables sourced at Sarajevo’s famous Markale green market. We were joined by Jillian Bruschera, papermaker and founder of The Mobile Mill, launching her new invention, The Papermaker's Pack.

We each brought our personal histories to the project: Pantic, through his memories of military academy in Sarajevo during his youth, which he explores through his culinary nom de guerre, “Djulistan, PhD in Oriental Sweets,” and me, through a Bosnian woman to whom I wrote during the Bosnian war and with whom I was reunited 20 years later in her Bosnian village.

Through media and materials that engage audiences in participatory events, we were able to extend traditional academic art practice into intersections of craft, traditional culture, ethnography, documentary, and performance.

Pulp & Pastry was facilitated through a Fulbright Scholar award nine years earlier that led to the construction, overseen by Pantic, of a hand papermaking studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade.