Florian Agalliu

Rituals Chapter One

Islamic extremists praying at the national library... they are still doing it... I started to record their prayers... I have some incredible footage... you must see their faces and actions when they realised someone wasn't just watching them, but recording on tape, what they are doing...ESCALATION OF THREATS FOLLOWED, but i have learnt to deal with that type of things in communist albania...YOU MUST KNOW THAT THESE PEOPLE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM.... they are all hired mercenaries, young men from very poor and totally uneducated village families (both in terms of social and religious culture) getting a scholarship from islamic organizations [they are run by some ex KLA (Kosovo liberation army) fighters and other types of political extremists, who have adopted this perverted practice of islam as a way to secure support for the recognition of a pure ethnic and islamic kosovar albanian society]

I decided not to keep provoking them ... that would just served their purposes, since that's what they want, confrontation and public disorder... so... I am working on another direction now... I am building what I call counterweights...

Practically, while they go on with their prayer I will invite people to tell me their stories of use and abuse of the library... you have to know that starting in 1990 all albanian schools were closed, all albanian personnel was dismissed, all albanian structures of education were deleted... so...I will interview from the outside old workers of the library who will tell me about how they used to just look at the library from the outside, and in the background you (the viewer) will see these islamic extremists praying on public educational ground... the last stop for the background is the golden croos on the concrete dome of the church... these guys do their prayer on the corner of the library closest to the church, so there is no fucking way to miss it... such a mess...

"Sin" video, 7 min

In his videos, Driton Hajredini treats the relation of center-margin in the today’s world. The individual can develop his talent and skills to become an artist, but when he comes from the margins of the world and society he should overpass some additional barriers of adoption and recognition, which can sometimes be prerequisite for his being. An artist form the East with a suspicious ethnic and religious background, in this concrete case an Albanian from Kosova and Muslim, is forced to spend additional energy and to deal with problems of reserving the rights for staying and living in the West, in order to try then to get the artistic career, where not even success can save him from the stains of his background. Are these “suspicious” backgrounds that determine the luck, something like a born sin? The idea of sin sends Driton to a Christian church, where he looks for the answer for his problem from an old institution of a confession and recompensation of sin through prayers. He gets in the confessional with his hidden camera dialoging with the priest who also is surprised and confused with the questions that he asks, whether being Albanian is or isn’t a sin, Muslim and with documents from Kosova? The messenger of the foreign God says that this is not a sin but, eventually, it can be personal bad luck and he recommends the artist to pray to the God to give him more luck in his life and his art. The video “The Sin” of Driton Hajredini surely is after the revelation of the prejudice of the rich west world against the foreigners, which is being shown in some other works from other Albanian artists, especially from Sisli Xhafa and Adrian Paci. However, in this video I see another dimension, more generalized. Putting the camera in the confessional, Hajredini didn’t do it simply to create an interesting and humorous intrigue, for the fact that the address to which the artist is directed is obviously wrong and it can’t give him the reliable answers for what he is concerned in his life. The wrong address is the key for deconstruction of the large and small ideologies for the artist’s position in today’s society. The God himself, times ago omnipotent, the creator of the world, the first artist, today is presented as a marginalized force, with a symbolic influence, against alienated and prejudged mechanisms that dominate in today’s society.

Shkëlzen Maliqi

museum of contemporary history

I was born in the city in which bridges have a different function; instead of connecting, they divide.

I was born in the city where these bridges divide two communities that are totally different from one another -- serbs in the North and albanians in the South – both with different views.

I was born in the city identified by the “Iber” bridge.

"I was born near the bridge which is defacto a Museum, a Museum of Modern History, even though dejure is not so.

I was born near the “Ibri” river

I was born in Mitrovica."

Meat Shop, performance

In meat shop, the work thought purposely for 1/60insurgent space, the artist elevates to art work a moment of every day life (buying meat), involving the artistic institution (the National Gallery) and the political power. The happening will be, in fact, three days before the political elections that, like in the best (or the worse one) tradition, construct a facade useful in order to demonstrate all the good things that were made or are being made, in order to convince people not to interrupt this process. Alban Muja shows the hidden facade, that no one wants to show, the died meat, ready to being consumed, but first of all, the common action of a common person, that kind of person of which all speaks about but nobody really cares about them, except at the moment of the vote. Instead, the Alban Muja’s art bring in foreground, just this common and "poor" moment giving it a very important place in the cultural life, elevating it to global problem.

free your mind, Video 9:45 min

One of my first projects in video that I completed is “Free your mind” video. The video of Marina Abramovic was my starting point and it gave me the idea for my work. However, I was not very happy with the first form of the idea and, therefore, I continually tried to find a way to differentiate my work from that of Marina.

What should an artist do to respect the source of his inspiration, the work of a famous colleague who has made a name for herself, and at the same time, to distance himself from that work and that name, and to become himself? For a moment, I thought about how I could free myself, not from the influence, but from the torture of trying to find myself in the work of another artist, if I repeated loudly the famous name, until it lost its meaning. Then, I realised that this is a way to be freed from every name and influence. I started to spontaneously call the names of the artists that came to my mind and who have influenced me in one way or another. I felt that I was doing some kind of exorcism. In a way, I was respecting those names, but at the same time, I was freeing myself from a weight, from all that I had accumulated on my mind in the form of preferences and influences, by taking them off me and converting them into empty sounds, which one after another, were lost in time and space...

“PALESTINA” - video 6:31min

Palestina, 23, is an Albanian girl. Her name may sound strange and unusual, but her name is Palestina

The name has been thrilling to her since she understood the real history of it. However, she feels proud of her name and how she came to her name.

Palestina himself tells this history on video. Her mother, at the time when she was pregnant and was waiting to give birth to her, she was stunned by a tragedy taking place in Palestine.

Israeli soldiers killed a young Palestinian in front of his girlfriend. Sad because of the cruel killing of her lover young Palestinian girl, she got into her car, filled it with explosives and clashed along with this car bomb into an Israeli soldier convoy, killing as many as 20.

The event took place in 1982, weeks before giving birth to her kosova’s girl, later named after “Palestine”.

Her mother, stunned with the tragic news coming from Palestine, decided immediately that if the baby she was going to give birth to would be a girl, she would be named Palestine. Her husband and the entire family were severely against this unusual name, but she was set and did not defer the pressure.

On the video, Palestina herself tells how she understood the reality of her name’s history.

Through this video I wanted to present the importance of interpretation and influence of the news upon global society, including news dealing with tragic and horrifying events that spark extreme reactions as even today it is not that easy to distinguish the boundary between heroism and madness.