Left: Muslim men bow in prayer during the month of Ramadan inside the Isa Beg Mosque in Skopje, Macedonia, in 2010. Right: A young woman in traditional western Macedonian dress prepares to participate in a wedding procession the night before the Galicnik Wedding on July 14, 2007, in Macedonia’s western village of Galicnik. The traditional Galicnik Wedding is held every year on the Orthodox St. Peter’s Day. Macedonia in the same way they’d been attracted to Croatia and Slovenia. But unlike those nations, Macedonia’s crisis of identity, particularly that of ethnic identity, is still recent, fresh, and unhealed. For ten years, Macedonia has struggled to unite two cultural spheres whose history has been tense at best and violent at worst into one cohesive national identity. While the government (currently, the ethnic Macedonian–dominated VMRO-DPMNE) promotes ethnic integration, its actions are less committed. Macedonia: Timeless’ representation of a Western, Christianized nation is VMRO’s vision for Macedonia, not the country’s reality. Though the government denied any ill intent in neglecting Eastern and Islamic influences from the video, it is interesting to note how closely the release of this tourism campaign coincided with another government effort known as “Skopje 2014.” Skopje 2014 is a government-funded project whose aim is to give the nation’s capital, Skopje, a much needed facelift. As the nation’s largest city, Skopje is competing against the likes of Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Ljubljana— all cities with an attractive mix of Balkan and European styles. Skopje 2014 is Macedonia’s effort to put itself onto equal footing. Since 2010, statues, museums, and monuments have 6 <strong>SIPA</strong> NEWS slowly cropped up across the city center, transforming Skopje from a drab, Yugoslavian-era city into what it truly is: a European capital. Skopje 2014, however, falls prey to the same criticism as Macedonia: Timeless. The capstone statue of the project is a 12-meter rendering of Alexander the Great, a figure whose birthplace is a fiercely divisive issue between Macedonia and Greece. Other statues include leaders of the Macedonian revolution against Turkish rule, Saints Cyril and Methodius (the inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet), and a 17th-century revolutionary killed by the Turks. In a nearby park, there is a monument to the soldiers and police killed in the 2001 armed conflict with ethnic Albanian militants. It is easy to attribute these omissions to a transparent political game and to cast VMRO as an ethnically homogonous villain, but this oversimplifies the issue. Macedonia: Timeless and Skopje 2014 are not fundamentally political tools: they are incentives aimed at revitalizing Macedonia’s economy and putting the country on the map for adventurous travelers. Regardless of underlying political mentalities, any government should understand that ethnic tension or violence serves only as a repellant to tourists and investors. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the Macedonian government would invest in these tourism proj- ects by intentionally using provocative methods that have every potential to reopen old wounds. The issue, then, is the validity of a consciously formed national identity. Macedonia’s beautiful landscape has been occupied for thousands of years, has seen the rise and fall of dozens of empires. It has absorbed baklava from the East and pizza from the West. But Macedonia is a young nation still tasting true independence for the first time. This newfound freedom has forced the nation to ask itself: Who am I? Who are we? And perhaps most provocatively, who has the authority to answer these questions? With the goal of increasing tourism, revitalizing the country, and bringing Macedonia squarely into a European future, the Macedonian government has granted itself that authority. Macedonia: Timeless and Skopje 2014 are the government’s answer to the question of national identity: whether they will bring the nation into a new future of economic and social prosperity remains to be seen. Sara Ray is an administrative assistant in <strong>SIPA</strong>’s Office of Communications and External Relations. While in the Peace Corps, she lived and worked in Macedonia as the programming coordinator of an interethnic and interfaith leadership program for young women.
Branding a Global city, one campaign at a time By andrea Moore The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
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