⋮ [2024]
The following is a documentation of individual studies within the three sections of ⋮ starting in Albania (Vlora, Galeria e Bregdetit), followed by Kosovo (Prishtina and Prizren) and ending in Germany (Munich, Lothringer 13 Halle, in collaboration with Ilinca Fechete).
01/03 The Smell of Concrete / Petrichor. Iron Cast, 36x18x5cm
02/03 Untitled (Sazan Parquet). Graphite on Paper, 23x16cm
Frottage of the floor of the commandant's housing units on the former military island of Sazan, which is now uninhabited. Located in the Bay of Vlora, Sazan has been open to civilians since 2015 and now faces a total remodelling by the disputable billion-dollar plans of Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. A catalyst for proximity towards approaching the boundary between Hoxha’s insularity and the imaginary Albania of today.
03/03 Gift. Laser-engraved Crystal Glass, 10x11x5cm
Rendered image variations of the speculative luxury tourism development project by Jared Kushner. Three souvenir replicas of the ‘New Albania’ under Edi Rama, shown in Galeria e Bregdetit and at the reception of the hosting Hotel Picasso, where the island is in prime view.
01/01 Te Plepat. Intervention with Sound Performances
Intervention in the park surrounded by the main bazaar, next to the Te Plepat bus stop in the centre of Prishtina. The locked former car park was temporarily opened to the public with sound performances by rosi and Manuel Sékou.
01/04 MoneyNations. Video, 23:18 Min., 1920x1080px
MoneyNations was an [exception], an exhibition, a webzine, a radio, a conference, a video archive, a printed publication, an infrastructure, a counterpublic, [a counterelliptic], an ongoing discussion, a transnational network of friends. Initiated by Marion von Osten [1963 – 2020], the project evolved from an urgency to configure a response to the hegemonic forces of “the West” within the radically changing condition of post-Cold War Europe. MoneyNations addressed – and intervened in – the interdependence between the ‘transnational flow of capital’, media representation, exploitative economic relations, and identity-forming and reconfiguring processes.
In an attempt to demarcate the profound political relevance within such attempts as well as their coincidental conjunction to our findings after interelliptic, our work organizes and intersects private archival footage from LaborK3000 with publicly accessible footage from the Swiss Social archives, images, correspondences and other ephemera – due to, and for, MoneyNations – into a video epilogue. Installments of the MoneyNations research trips between 1998 – 2000 are depicted, in parallel to extracts from interviews aiming ‘to build a counter-representational pool of theorists[...] to discuss the question of representational politics in perception of the so-called East, and its meaning for the construction of the border, new nationalism, and low-wage production locations’.
Cut and Sounddesign: Vincent Hannwacker. Video and Image Archive: Labor k3000, Swiss Social Archive.
MoneyNations brochure PDF
03/04 I-III. Laser-engraved Steel Locks, 8x8x1,5cm
04/04 Untitled (after Renée Green Import/Export Funk Office ‘95 CD-ROM). 3D-printed PETG, 12x27x0,8cm