seven kilometres north-east is a new performance from version 1.0 exploring the uneasy entanglement of place, tourism and atrocity. What happens when a town of great beauty conspires to whitewash and repackage its history? What crucial facts have been omitted from the tourist guidebook? What is the price of peace? The work was triggered by a visit by version 1.0's Kym Vercoe (deviser/performer) to the famous Mehmed Paaa Sokolovi Bridge, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 2008. Completed in 1571, this bridge forms an historical link between east and west, made famous in Nobel-prize winning author Ivo Andri_x0018_ s novel The Bridge over the Drina. The nearby Vilina Vlas Spa Resort in Viaegrad, was recommended in a tourist guidebook, and so Vercoe checked in. The visit was a great success, filled with tourist adventures and slivovitz-fuelled conversations with locals. Upon returning home, Vercoe discovered to her horror that certain facts about Viaegrad had been omitted from the tourist guidebook. The travelogue shifts, turning to a darker reflection upon how places bear traces of the atrocities that occur within and around them, the unspeakable and unbearable acts that current residents are only too happy to see erased or obscured. Drawing upon journal notes, the writings of Ivo Andri, tourist guidebooks, correspondence with guidebook editors, and transcripts from the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, seven kilometres north-east is an evocative and deeply personal political performance.

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