Artists representing Albania at the 1st Biennial of Thessalonica:
Cosmopolis 1: Microcosmos < x > Macrocosmos

"Beautiful Hell"
Existing at the same time both inside and outside Europe, Albania is a nation, which has changed dramatically
throughout the last fifteen years.
On the macro level these changes are well known: the disappearance of an old identity – monism – and
materialization of a new identity – democracy. In the same way it was given the first identity to a new born
human – by attaching a number in his/her wrists – the new identity given to the new Albanian democracy, in
the moment of her parturition from the lacerate uterus of her history, consisted on many numbers, These
numbers represented data generated by specialised international institutions, witnessing a physic an
psychological portrait of Albania, This was a portrait intended to be recognized by other nations, who, until that
point, knew nothing about Albania. Sometimes disparaging and humiliating, we are still carrying this new
assigned identity and it will mark our fate: the Why, the How and the When of our future.
All movements of the Albanian citizens that were previously controlled, limited, forbidden turned into permissive
chaos, both internally and across the exterior boundaries of the country. One of the largest internal migrations
in the modern history of Albania occurred when huge part of the population moved en masse from the
countryside to the cities, breaking old rules and borders. Their motivation was not hard to figure out; they could
not resist the temptation of a new live outside the old ideological and political borders. The former consumer of
a monist political reality became the consumer of a new pragmatist reality. Cut loose from the old system of
communication, by moving into new unknown spaces they lost their base, their roots and security.
The memory of yesterday became a collage of touched-up photographs, of cut texts, of censured histories;
today’s memory is a sell-out reality, bought by the powerful mass media, the only mediator between citizen
and the event.
- From a total dearth of universal competition and lack of information they found themselves catapulted into an
ocean of opinions and ideas, confronted by a floundering in competitiveness without rules for a centaur-like
democracy.
- From a totalitarian political system to a pluralistic political system;
- From an economy based on collective of the ‘all who belong together’, to the reality of a free market economy;
- From a society oppressed by the propaganda which penetrated friendships, families and marital relationships,
whith the utopian aim of creating a new human being - ‘the other like me’ - to a society oppressed by a
pragmatic propaganda preaching freedom for all without boundaries for anyl, all equally different;
- From a censorship weighing crushingly on culture and social norms to a culture and social norms where
social norms allow everything and anything to be said – but at the price of a total lack of impact. Power creates
archetypes of thought in the same way that the King of ‘One thousand and One Nights’ created the shape of
Scheherazade…
On the micro level each individual is trying to change their personally recorded memory. Everything affects
each person’s memory, the tremendous effort to know oneself among a surfeit of events and ideas the new
technologies bring them so closely, so quickly/ intensely/ violently.
The time-space-movement turns out to have new dimensions and values for every individual. The world
conceived by Gazmend Leka owns the contradiction of the darkness of time and opening up to the light. He
represents the steadfastness of his own physical and spiritual light. Geometrical shapes and signs are always
present to his works; geometrical shapes which represents the artist’s will for perfection, and signs, as a whole
philosophical tradition avoided, that represent the only indefinable things remaining from our previous world.
Najada Hamza and her ‘Nation+N’ embody the fact of giving birth to a new life, creation of a new individuality.
She does not bother with gender or physical qualities of the new human being who will be formed inside the
round womb, multiplied by the process of screen printing. The sole preoccupation of the artist is to know of
which nation the new born baby will be a member, and the signs and language they will use for communication.
It is a decisive victory of a global pragmatism grounded on a local romanticism.
Suela Muça’s art project consist of a specific strategy of visual display that portrays visually the post
Socialist ideology in Albania during ‘90ies.Inequality during the real Socialism in Albania brought about the
restoration of the creative soul of the individual by the indifference of the crowd and an extreme poverty in the
market. A few Albanians, who had the privilege of going abroad on business, brought back some presents
like chewing gum fro children and some plastic bags or women. These plastic bags were kept as precious
things: women carried them along whiletaking walks, washed them when they got dirty and sewed them and
glued them whenever they were torn out.
Those plastic bags were a symbol of being different in the country with a ghost market.
Soon after the fall of the Berlin wall, hungry and thirsty crowds of Albanians set out in their biblical exodus
toward the rich world, funny ads; chewing gum and colorful plastic bags’ ignoring any risk they might run into.
Now you can find in Albania everything you want: luxurious cars, children’s organs, women and girls whose
tads is flourishing and bringing in daily profits. The false equality has been replaced by unbridled and
unscrupulous pragmatism. Moneymakers have full power over human right and reason. Having been unable to
keep up with the wild reality, the artist remains lonely, with a plastic bag and goes in search of what he lacks
in such a limitless society of consumption: dignity, friendship, quietness, coexistence, communication,
tolerance, respect, human equality, unpolluted environment, greenery, fresh air, love without interest, the right
to decide and above all, independent views. As Wollen puts it each historic period has its own rhetoric mode
of display, because each has different truth to conceal.
The video installation ‘Vote Merita Harxhi Koci for President of Kosovo’ is the creation of a woman artist
against the macho policies of the Kosovo / Balkan realities. The artist Merita Koci concentrates on two
concepts: ‘to have is power’ or ‘to know is power’ (after F.Jameson.). The perception of breaking and changing
becomes a meaning in itself. A new way of perceiving differenties is when you register the change; than
something positive happens in your mind.
Rudina Memaga gets her inspiration from the figures of marginalized people within the society of her city. We
come cross these individuals every day in our city streets; sometimes we know them by name. The fact is that
the misery projected by their image has a therapeutic impact on a pragmatic passer-by. Memaga’s ‘Fashion
Victim’s’, snapshots with figures of beggars- protagonists shown on the billboards of the city’s main streets are
ephemeral objects of these ephemeral snapshot-subjects, a record that the author desires to turn into memory
by means of photography. For his ironical work ‘Construction of Destruction’ Pirro Koci addresses the
recycling of Primordial Sinn by big industries, such as the tobacco industry. He uses recycled cigarette boxes,
recycled life, recycled ideas ‘of a world like ours, based on very practical principle, where people are pushed
to evaluate every thing or phenomenon by its function,purpose and meaning’ (H.G.Gadamer).
The artist confronts a Beautiful Hell, an absurd reality accepted as normal everyday life. We were to hasty
in arriving at the Present, leaving after us something not yet resolved, always giving up something not yet
discovered, and on the brink of discovering something still unknown. Our inner problem was to fulfill the
existing emptiness throughout times; our outer problem was to be coherent and build a culture concerned with
contemporary life in the West. Sartre stated that ‘the Hell is the Other’. Being the ‘Other’ different but my equal, the Hell is Me as well, and different at the same time. But paradoxically, my own Hell is Beautiful, because I used to live there and I learned to love it.

(Text for the catalogue of the biennial by Eleni Laper