⋮ [2024]
The simultaneous punctuation mark, ⋮ — also referred to as vertical ellipsis¹ in mathematics — is typically reserved for marking a missing term in a matrix that reads from top to bottom. Where a single value is unknown or general duration to be suggested, the three vertical dots will appear. In narrative fiction², time allocates itself simultaneously to both sides of the mark.
⋮
Against the backdrop of Albania’s long pronounced isolation, the continuity of Kosovo's segregation, labour strategies and contemporary power affiliations between Albania, Kosovo and Western Europe, the necessity for new methodologies of discourse has informed an emergent platform, residency and exhibition series titled “⋮”.
Across and between Vlora, Prishtina, and Munich, ⋮ revolved around the interception of ten young artists and interdisciplinary practitioners who, having had no previous contact with each other, worked within a thematically open, itinerant and process-based structure. The first section of the project took place from 10.06. - 01.08.2024 in the Southern Balkans at Galeria e Bregdetit (Vlora) and Hani i 2 Robertëve (Prishtina, in collaboration with Foundation 17) in the form of intensive short-term on-site residencies with subsequent exhibitions, which were accompanied by artist talks, screenings, cooking and listening sessions. The second section of the project took place from 22.10. - 17.11.2024 at the Lothringer 13 Halle (Munich) and concluded the exhibition series with a large-scale overview of the project’s aftermath, whilst operating as a dialogical space for encounter. It was accompanied by lectures, concerts, and screenings.
Operating in environments discerned as socio-economically distinct to a radical extent, the project aimed to identify commonalities and themes which transcend geographical borders. Since these distinctions are seen (e.g. from the perspective of various cultural funding politics) as a determinant as well as a driver for transformation processes, with a wish to create a common ground of idealistic exchange and probing political conditioning within such environments, one might ask the following: what occurs with the contestation of the necessity for exchange-driven development, adaptation, and futurist-oriented narratives?
The project seeked to navigate within and throughout local, international, epicentral and peripheral nodes of production and mediation of geopolitical interests amidst tainted cultural spheres of influence. The successive residency periods, therefore providing for intensive on-site discourse on production and representation, thus define spatio-temporal parameters for site-specific inquiry only insofar as to point to its conditioning elsewhere. Embodying a momentum both linear and nonlinear, the resulting platform thus approached knowledge production in a processual, ephemeral and eclectic sense, while based on trust. Essentially observing specificity (simultaneity) in constant becoming. The production of ⋮ was part of its mediation, where the narrative of influence may be speculated, and reflected upon in an epistemic way — whilst still speaking to the myths of artistic practice and site-specific parastructure in artistic production. In addition to its narrative function, the simultaneity mark ⋮ might help to visualise multiple, contradictory ideas and provoke scepticism about the hierarchy of a left-to-right reading system. Overall, the scope of establishing a platform for long-term exchange is of substantial interest in light of the historical and complex migratory entanglements and converging geopolitical dynamics; a matrix housing multiple simultaneities.
⋮ was developed by Andrea Veselá and Martin Huber in exchange with Elian Stefa, Fabio Toska, Nita Zeqiri, Fitore Isufi Shukriu, Ilinca Fechete, Lisa Britzger, Rosa Luckow and Tesa Kabashi. The project was supported by Akademieverein München, BBK Bayern, Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts, BAYHOST, Kulturreferat München, Goethe Zentrum Tirana, Goethe Zentrum Prishtina and ZoomEuropa. Participants: Laureta Hajrullahu, Martin Huber, Rosa Luckow, Xhulian Millaj, Elsaida Musiq, Elsamina Musiq, Ludwig Neumayr, Hana Qena, Somer Şpat and Andrea Veselá. Program: Ashikët e Gjakovës, Artjom Astrov, Sezgin Boynik, Dhervi, Jonida Gashi, Tesa Kabashi, Armando Lulaj, luxxuryproblems, Klodiana Millona, Tevfik Rada, rosi, rosi96, Manuel Sékou and Endi Tupja. Website and design by Levin Jaensch, Nicolas Marino, Nikolai Rusu. Code by Severin Brunhuber. Documentation by Ludwig Neumayr. Albanian translation by Endi Tupja.
¹ The term originates from the Ancient Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis meaning 'leave out'.
² With the invented application he suggests for this mark, Samuel R. Delany proposed an impossibility: that the reader take in two or more actions in the English language’s typical left-to-right reading order, but, in recognising the mark separating these actions, understand that they occur in perfect sync with one another, and not side-by-side in a narrative timeline.
interelliptic.info
www.lothringer13.com/en/program/archive/residency-and-exhibition-platform
www.e-flux.com/announcements/615014/residency-and-exhibition-platform
Poster for the first announcement of the platform and public programme (May 2024)
Digital banner for the first announcement of the platform and public programme (May 2024)