Research: "Women map of Boka Kotorska"

The research/study: "Women map of Boka Kotorska" is the precursor of the activity Public Spaces and Gender: History that no more exists, and the workshop: "Mapping of the women's spaces". The idea behind these activities is to recognize the layers of women's history in the Boka Kotorska, and  to show, in the cretive way, to the public through artistic interventions in public space.

Work on research: "Women map of Boka Kotorska" was conducted by the NGO Anima from Kotor - Ljupka Kovacevic, Ervina Dabizinovic and Paula Petricevic. The work was carried out in three phases: preparation, data collection stage and final stage.

The preparatory phase consisted of working meetings between researchers and agreement on strategies and methods of research. At these meetings the researchers were arranged in order to develop the idea, what are the problems and difficulties they face as well as the constant questioning of the initial ideas of rebellious women. The initial idea included the events that are relevant to the participation of women and women rebel in the Bay of Kotor in the period from the French bourgeois revolution to the Proletarian revolution (XVIII-XX century). In the preparatory phase of the research, it was agreed that data collection in Kotor and Herceg Novi uses Archives of Kotor and Herceg Novi, Native Library and The Library of Herceg Novi. The data collection phase in the planned areas involved the work on the original documents and records, newspapers and magazines, as well as interviews with individuals that were in possession of information. The final phase included working meeting with the designer on the agreement of the final data representation.

During the first working month it was already clear that data on women, in general, are very few since data on women are scattered. Especially, a request to find women who were rioting in the 19 century represented a huge problem. The problem of lack of information about women or the complete lack of information, in Herceg Novi, researchers resolved in a way that they were using contacts with the individuals that have worked in institutions where the research took place. A number of persons were taken into account because it is being identified that women belong to families whose members have been a good source of information. These are: Olivera Doklestic, Kiko Kosic, Milan Sjerkovic, Vesna Jaukovic and Nevenka Mitrovic.

In Kotor, individual interviews were conducted with Grgurevic Lipovac Muk family members. Data are insecure in relation to the person on whom they researchers asked. Interview with Ljubica Vrbic instructed the young SKOJ member Milica Vasova Vrbica, grammar school student who participated in the protests and constantly wore red-and- blue scarf, which she knitted herself, was activist in Kotor (died of tuberculosis in 1940).

Also, in Dobrota are done some interviews, previously with Antun Tonko Tomic, longtime librarian at the Maritime Museum in Kotor, Slavko Dabinovic, current librarian of the same institution, then with Zoran Radimir, Stevo Muk and Ana Popovic, antropologist, archivist in the City Museum of Perast. These talks resulted in a lower number of usable information for the purposes of this study, but they clarified some of the confusion which the researches encountered in collecting archival materials, helped contextualization of received data, and suggested opportunities for further research.

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