Expedition Francka

Expedition Francka revolves around Francka, a Slovenian bear who was moved to the French Pyrenees as part of a resettlement program in order to boost the native bear population. The reintroduction of bears caused fierce protest from local sheep farmers and Francka was eventually killed in a collision with a car on a mountain motorway. The Francka incident reveals a greater issue of migration, exclusion, tourism, and protest. The project builds on fieldwork in the Pyrenees (FR) for the realisation of an intervention in the Kočevje region (SL) where an existing graffiti from the French Pyrenees — expressing protest against the reintroduction of bears — was copied and introduced in the region in which the bear originally lived. The intervention was followed by a more permanent art installation consisting of two facing wall posters and a kiosk holding a pile of takeaway journals, revealing the larger context of the intervention.

This project was made in collaboration with the artist Filip Van Dingenen. It was funded by Provincie Vlaams Brabant and exhibited at CC Strombeek, Brussels (BE) in 2008.

Excerpt from Annelies Vaneycken's Expedition Francka Field notes:

Asphalt & broken skeletons

After we had finished drinking our maté at the lake of Kočevje, we started to drive towards the place we had marked on the map the night before. The spot had grabbed our attention as soon as we had opened the detailed map of the Kočevski Rog forest: in the entire national park there were only ‘white lines’, small unpaved roads, except for this one place somewhere in the middle that was marked yellow which meant there was an asphalted street in the middle of the forest.

As we left the outskirts of Kočevje, we entered the virgin forest and the street became a gravel road. Filip had to slow down the car. The monotone sound of the wheels crunching gravel was punctuated from time to time by a ping as one of the pebbles hit the coachwork of the car. After we had been driving for a while and had seen nothing but dense forest, we reached our destination. As white-line road became yellow-line, we thought we were in heaven. This would be the perfect location to put our tag: it was in the middle of the national park, home of Francka, and – more importantly – the road was asphalted, suitable to paint on.

We were curious to find out why this desolate piece of road in particular was asphalted and soon discovered the grim truth. Yugoslav people that were suspected of collaborating with the Nazi regime during World War II had been massacred in this idyllic forest. When the war ended and ‘the collaborators’ were returning to their home country, special units of the Yugoslav Army lay in waiting for them in the isolated forest of Kočevski Rog. They were thrown into jamas or caves spread all over the forest, which were then sealed using explosives. This particular stretch of road was paved to hold remembrance services for the victims of these massacres. We could not use it for Francka’s memorial.

(...) We were walking down a small forest path, following the signs for Jama Debliske Livade. When we arrived we saw a wooden fence around a small hole which cut deep into the ground. Some people had left candles, as constant reminders of their grief. I looked into the hole but couldn’t see anything, it was pitch black – a darkness so intense to erase this dark time in history. I tried to imagine the thousands of broken skeletons at the bottom of the black. I felt the presence of all the victims that were wrongfully executed, and shivered.