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Kosovo 2.0 People/politics/society/arts/culture #5 SPRING/SUMMER 2013

PUBLIC SPACE A guide to revolution Prishtina's public spaces Seeds of protests Divisive monuments Mission's fiction Cyber(public)space KOSovo: € 3,- elsewhere: € 6,-/ $ 8,-

Letter from the editor Besa luci

— When we launched our Sex issue in December, it was met with an attack from a group of radical Islamists, hooligans and self-proclaimed morality police. They mobilized via bigoted, racist slurs and acted out of their self-proclaimed legitimacy to bring to our society what they consider “order and control.”

What followed was a string of reactions from government and international community representatives — fulfilling the responsibility to provide security and upholding the rule of law — and the ombudsperson and civil society organizations (providing voices against violations of free speech and human rights). Meanwhile, sensationalist media coverage and uninformed public reaction surrounding the event was marred by hate speech and ignorance.

This incident was similar to so many other cases in the past 13 years amid Kosovo’s “democratization,” cases in which the liberties of individuals or groups have been acted on violently based on the self-righteous and promulgated convictions of others in attempts to impose rights of authority, control and action.

Among these was the destruction in December of World War II memorials and Serbian graves in retaliation to Serbia’s forcible removal of the monument to the martyrs of the Liberation Army of Presheva, Medvegja and Bujanoc, in Presheva, south Serbia; the March attack on activist Nazlije Balaj, who advocated for the recognition of those women raped during the 1999 war as a legal category in Kosovo’s existing legislation on war veterans, invalids and civilian victims; and a number of attacks on journalists for reporting on fraudulent politics and

businesses.What all these cases have in common is the failure of the judiciary to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Today in Kosovo, we need to rethink public space not merely as the physical space around us, but as the venue for producing and providing a critique in pursuit of a free dialogue.

Our discourse for the past 13 years has been infiltrated by the criticisms of corrupt politicians, fraudulent politics, malfunctioning institutions, captured economies, failures to implement legislation, and discriminatory international policies. While such a critique must be fostered for the purpose of improving our democratic life, no substantial change will take place until we come to truly embrace what participatory and free public debate in a democracy means.

That is why in this issue we look at public space as central to how struggles of participation, civil rights, equality, liberty and even memory are negotiated. No true democratization of our societies will occur unless we take a firm look at what we expect from democracy as well as what we give in return. Public space offers a meaningful entry point to that discussion.

When speaking about public space, it helps to provide a retrospective analysis of the socio-political and economic transformations leading to the rise of modern industrial cities and their implications. We also outline the emergence of modern concepts of suburban expansion and what that tells us about community values. And we detail the battles fought for social control and political domination; see our cover story, “Dissecting Prishtina,” and profiles of Gjakova, Prizren, Mitrovica, Prishtina, Tirana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Skopje and Novi Sad. Whether pointing to urban planning flaws, calling on ci-

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— In this issue we look at public space as central to how struggles of participation, civil rights, equality, liberty and even memory are negotiated.

tizens to demand change, utilizing public space as a point for congregation or proposing solutions, our stories continuously unravel the tangle between those who govern — and how they govern — and those who are due to participate in such spaces. Because, ultimately, such relationships also speak to how physical structures in public space are made to enable or limit public participation. These structures especially reflect the citizen’s role in the particular social or political system.

For example, our stories on socialist monuments in Kosovo and memorials from the 1999 war confront the continuous attempts to locate and contest their origin stories, and our articles serve as reminders of clashing narratives of authority over who (de)legitimizes and how.

That is why it’s important to look at public space through the prisms of protest, participation, legitimacy, and even exclusion. These are discussions we place on the global platform of social movements around the world, in places where public space serves as a venue to mobilize and to negotiate politics.

These examinations reference the precedents of French rebellions, and they look at how Prishtina’s 1981 student demonstrations challenged the former Yugoslav regime, transforming into a resistance and a call for independence.

Our inquiries end up in the transformative movements of recent years — Occupy, the Arab Spring, Chile’s student protests — where they have not only challenged participatory politics and channels of expression, but altered the roles of citizens as well.

This issue highlights the many artistic interventions and performances that bring criticism and commentary to the #5 PUBLIC space Spring/summer 2013

streets and new public venues in cyberspace. Through their novel forms and interpretations, these creative works seek to reclaim the spaces we create, inhabit, use, live in and communicate through.

I want to reiterate the theme of justice.This is our goal if we want to break the hold on captured public space and the public realm.When speaking about public space, one man needs to be remembered: my uncle Rexhep Luci, an architect and director for urban planning in Prishtina. Despite his murder in 2000, he is still called “the only man with a true vision for Prishtina.” His work in post-1999 Kosovo focused on establishing urban order amid the chaotic and illegal transformations that were suffocating our city then and still do so today. His murder brought that vision to an end.

Time and again, I have heard his death called the turning point of post-war, liberated Kosovo — the moment at which the international community lost its grip on restoring rule of law, and when many Kosovars realized their participation and influence were under attack and were threatened with elimination. Many injustices followed Rexhep’s murder, and among them is the fact that this crime remains unsolved.

In these respects, my uncle’s murder has continued to haunt our memories of the city; even recalling his death has inhibited our willingness to rebuke repression and tempered our personal and collective influence.

In memory of and with respect to his life and work, we can aspire to an open and transformative public space.Through that work, citizens can reclaim their rightful place. I hope this issue is a contribution to that effort. — K 5

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content kosovotwoPointzero mAgAzine Public sPAce Ñ #5 2013

revolution how-to

movements' incePtion

a guide to historic moments seen through confl icting lenses.

By michael S. mcKenna

human bonding and public space are at roots of revolution.

By agon maliqi

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'city of kitsch'?

cAPitAl of clAshes Zagreb, croatia, deals with fractured past, contested future.

By danijela Simrak

PrishtinA: inside its history

sAving dokufest

Skopje, the “city of Solidarity,” remains lost among its monuments.

By Kristina ozimec

the capital and its many changes have never formed a modern city.

By Besnik Pula

the renowned fi lm festival needs help from Prizren.

By agron demi

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content kosovotwoPointzero mAgAzine Public sPAce Ă‘ #5 2013

mourning And memories Kosovo’s war memorials inspire awe and criticism.

By anna di Lellio

relics of the PAst Yugoslav monuments, no matter their grandeur, are left to crumble.

By Vesa Sahatciu

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Public sPAce: A finAl frontier

A wAsted city

tAking bAck the city

AfghAnistAn's grAffiti icon

artist nikolin Bujari's biggest canvas: public space.

By eriola Pira

female artist wins fans while facing criticism.

By ellie Kealey

Kosovo citizens must demand changes to their cities.

By enver robelli

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alban muja wants to help Prishtina overcome its challenges with public spaces.

By farhad mirza

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content kosovotwoPointzero mAgAzine Public sPAce Ă‘ #5 2013

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heAr the chAnge?

no feAr in chile

scrutinizing eulex

the evolution of protest music continues its movement.

By Sezgin Boynik

demonstrators demand public space and are willing to fight for it.

By ines Pousadela

shock As A weAPon russia's Voina art Group fights back against what it sees as tyranny with protests in public space.

By eamonn Sheehy

eu rule of Law mission in Kosovo's grand ideas and obscure realities.

By ajkuna hoppe

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internet users tAke on chinA

sociAl mediA sPAnning the world

chinese gather in the online public space and thereby change the country.

By Jiahui chen

technology is changing countries from the former Soviet states to Southeast asia.

By Lume hyseini

mAn of the Protests rron Gjinovci has spent years making his voice heard.

By hana marku

âžł #5 PuBlic sPace sPring/summer 2013

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content kosovotwopointzero magazine public space Ñ #5 2013

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wash in hopelessness Gjakova in Kosovo is vtvvvvmired in problems because of the past.

By Dren Pozhegu

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From the editor's desk

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Debate, across the map In the 1990s, informal sites changed public discourse in Prishtina.

By Dardan Zhegrova

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A feminine mystique Women's influence on the city needs to be strengthened.

By Eliza Hoxha

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A city without a past

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Inside the library

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City of art

Public spaces' pivotal point

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CentRE of problems

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Divided city Mitrovica’s public spaces fall across the directions on a compass.

By Lulzim Hoti

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Life through lens The relationship between spaces and people is explored in a photo series.

By Agim Balaj

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Needed: Agents of change Should the media in Kosovo become places for public debate?

By Ardian Arifaj

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Cover to cover Book reviews put spotlight on powerful pageturners.

By Hana Marku

The Skenderija complex in Sarajevo has problems, just like its host city.

By Justyna Gorniak

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Taxing situation Getting Kosovars to pay their fair share is hard, but possible.

By Lumir Abdixhiku

Activists in Novi Sad work to build a place for people to gather and share ideas.

By Danijel Sivinjski

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No party, no problem.

Hani i Elezit’s mayor bypasses typical pillars of power.

By Una Hajdari

Tirana, Albania, has been both artistic subject and hotbed.

By Eriola Pira

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Protests and public space Fight for human rights starts in the streets.

By Dardan Zhegrova

The biggest opportunity for the Kosovo capital's future is chaos.

By Michael S. McKenna

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IMore than an act Indian street theater performers get out their message on the streets.

By Priya M. Menon

Prishtina's volatile history and chaotic present make for a place without an identity.

By Gyler Mydyti

Prishtina's strength

Invading public space Taking stock of the artists who enliven Prishtina.

By Cristina Mari

The homes for collections of books are also the places to accumulate knowledge.

By Rozafa Basha

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Building a better city An in-depth look at an urban development plan for Prishtina.

By Douglas Morris

Besa Luci's take on public space.

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Editorial: Sex and violence Violence plagued Kosovo 2.0's last launch. Now, a response.

By Arben Idrizi

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Michael S. McKenna is a writer and journalist from Montreal, Canada, now living in Prishtina. His work can be found in publications such as Kosovo 2.0, Vice, AskMen, The Huffington Post, and on his own blog at inpristina.com.

history, As we Are All AwAre, is written by the victors. there is no country in the world whose elementAry school textbooks describe its founders As "A bunch of unshAven men with A vAn." insteAd, we tend to Pretty things uP A little; we mAke them less crAzed And confusing.

— We Prefer to LiVe in a WorLd whose present is seen as inevitable.

ries, we tend to shun the role of “historian.” We prefer “screenwriter.”

marie antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.” Paul revere never shouted, “the British are coming!” in the fi rst case, the infamous phrase was invented by JeanJacques rousseau for his “confessions,” published when the future queen was 9. in the latter, henry Wadsworth Longfellow selected revere’s name from a group of new england patriots because it rhymed with “hear.”

unlike facts, stories resemble us. this is why we like them. Stories are loose, flexible, fickle and multidirectional. Stories adjust to their circumstances.

in the non-inspiring realm that is actual history, the story of revere ends with his arrest in a bar. this is not important, though. these are just facts. facts are dusty, depressing things. they’re trivia. Geekery. facts are for losers and pedants. as Joan didion famously noted, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” and even the most cursory glance at history — revolutionary history in particular — quickly reveals that stories are what we really thrive on. heroes and villains; victories and defeats; dark nights; long odds; tortured souls; and surprise endings. When it comes to our own histo-

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So, in presenting this glance at certain notable revolutions, we have chosen to have it both ways. We don’t know how all of these will turn out, over the course of centuries. So we’re presenting choices: the truth according to the facts; the truth as it might exist if the revolutionaries are successful; and the truth as it might be written if they fail. in a lot of these cases, as Zhou enlai said of the french revolution, in 1972, “it’s still too early to tell.”* * Of course, he never said this. It was a mistranslation.

It was a story.

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#1 the ArAb sPring

— the factS: Wave of protests, uprisings, demonstrations and riots originating in tunisia rock the arab world. the government in that country is toppled, as are those in Libya, egypt and Yemen. rulers in Bahrain, morocco, algeria, iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait and Syria find themselves under siege. continuing conflicts in Syria and mali approach the level of civil war. victorious version: tired of corruption, autocracy, authoritarianism, inequality and puppet governments, the people of the arab world rise up and return control of their lands to the people. defeated version: Spurred on by power-lust and shadowy international actors, malcontents from africa to the arab heartland attempt to overthrow longstanding and stable governments, reducing their countries to a protracted series of power struggles between religious fanatics, military leaders and agents of u.S. imperialism.

#2 the tiAnAnmen

sQuAre uPrisings

— the factS: a series of student-led, pro-democracy protests gather popular support in Beijing, resulting in a civilian occupation of the chinese capital’s pre-eminent public square. the ruling communist Party forcefully suppresses the uprising, dispersing the seven-week-long occupation with live ammunition, killing thousands. victorious version: With the world watching, idealistic chinese activists bravely gather to show their discontent with a closed and unresponsive ruling party. though unsuccessful, the uprising plants the seeds of individual liberty, changing china and the communist Party forever. defeated version: capitalistic counter-revolutionaries attempt the violent overthrow of the communist system that has led to china’s position as the world’s leading global power. they are dispersed, by necessity, and china goes on to enjoy two decades of unprecedented stability and growth.

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#3 the irAniAn revolution

— the factS: Popular demonstrations against Shah reza Pahlavi turn into a country-paralyzing series of strikes and uprisings. islamic groups fi ll the resulting power vacuum, and in 1979, an 80-year-old exiled cleric is voted, by referendum, into the position of “Supreme Leader.” victorious version: a conservative, spiritually minded polity throws off the shackles of a decadent, Western-backed political class and returns iran to a system of religious governance that enjoys popular support everywhere, save the Westernized districts of tehran. defeated version: rural religious fanatics capitalize on widespread public dissatisfaction, proposing a return to traditional moral practices that they claim would combat corruption. upon gaining power, they install a medieval theocracy, decimating the economy and hobbling the cultural output of a formerly sophisticated, modern nation.

#4 the cubAn revolution

— the factS: after an unsuccessful petition for the ouster of cuban leader fulgencio Batista in 1953, fidel castro launches armed confl ict with his 26th of July movement (aided by argentinian doctor and revolutionary che Guevara). Batista flees cuba after the fall of the city of Santa clara, allowing castro to take power in 1959. victorious version: forward-thinking socialist revolutionaries wrest control of cuba from a cynical, u.S.backed dictator. a vast, communist restructuring program raises literacy rates, educational access and health care. defeated version: a local cell of Soviet-aligned radicals, with the aid of other foreign interlopers, fights a bloody war to ally the island nation with the cold War’s losing team. foreign investment virtually disappears, and cuba enters a strange, hermetic historical time-warp in which the only equality is poverty.

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#5 the russiAn revolution

—the factS: Bolsheviks operating in Petrograd — previously St. Petersburg, later Leningrad, now St. Petersburg again — overthrow the provisional government, giving power to local worker collectives known as “soviets.” they go on to seize the Winter Palace and ultimately to form the u.S.S.r. victorious version: a strange, bloody and repressive ancien regime, led by tsar nicholas ii and plotted according to the occult dictates of monk Grigori rasputin, is overthrown. it is replaced by the world’s first communist empire, leading russia to arguable global supremacy within decades. defeated version: Shadowy political actors, inspired by the unproven theories of economist Karl marx, seize russian power, exchanging one repressive dictatorship for another. millions die under the rule of the paranoid and vengeful Josef Stalin.

#6 the young

turks revolution

—the factS: Prominent turkish intellectuals and dissidents reverse the suspension of the ottoman Parliament, which had been imposed by Sultan abdul hamid ii. he is later deposed, and though his brother is named sultan, the ottoman empire soon collapses, paving the way for the establishment of the modern turkish republic under Kemal ataturk. victorious version: modern-thinking luminaries deliver the fatal blow to a decaying, autocratic empire. their pro-Western, european-inspired vision is answered by the establishment of the secular, democratic republic of turkey in 1922. defeated version: a group of upper-class turks, in accordance with their own interests, purges the ottoman aristocracy and seizes control of turkey. Stripped of empire, and operating under a secular consensus that remains unpopular in many parts of the country, turkey declines from the center of a world empire to a middling, inward-looking country whose main ambition is to join the eu.

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#7 the french revolution

—the factS: Spurred by enlightenment concepts of liberty and rights-of-citizenship, the newly formed liberal political factions of france overthrow the aristocratic rule of the ancien regime. the purging of the royals and the nobility becomes a reign of terror in which tens of thousands are killed. the principles central to the newborn french republic dominate political discourse up through the present. victorious version: a decadent cadre of parasitic, frivolous nobles is deposed by force as still-celebrated ideals of freedom and individual rights awaken in the enlightenment-era capital. defeated version: a series of bloody, decapitation-intensive street fights allows france’s merchant class to assume the privileges once afforded only to landed aristocrats. inflamed by abstract rights and ideals, the people of france create, under the guise of popular freedom, a soft dictatorship of mercantile capitalism that survives to this day.

#8 the AmericAn revolution

—the factS: British colonists, angered by imperial taxation and nonrepresentative government, declare their independence in 1776, sparking a vast conflict. after eight years of fighting, and with significant french assistance, the colonists achieve independence with the treaty of Paris, becoming the united States of america. victorious version: a rag-tag group of spirited colonials, inspired by enlightenment ideals of liberty and democracy, throw off the shackles of a greedy, callous and possibly insane monarch. the new nation becomes the most successful the world has ever seen. the Boston tea Party is a courageous display of idealism and resolve. defeated version: dyspeptic Boston merchants refuse to pay their taxes, sparking a war that claims tens of thousands of lives. they go on to form a constitutionbased “proposition nation” whose abstract legalistic form contains the seeds of its eventual collapse. the Boston tea Party is an embarrassing riot in which a bunch of hooligans dressed up as american indians. — K

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Skopje: Lost among the monuments Macedonia's capital carries the moniker 'City of Solidarity,' but 'City of Kitsch' might be more appropriate text by Kristina Ozimec / PhotoS by IVANA KUZMANOVSKA

— In my hometown of Skopje, the past few years have seen as many changes as the previous few decades. If your last visit was more than a few years ago, forget it — you won't recognize the place.You'll get disoriented, lose your bearings, make wrong turns when you're sure you know the way. But don't worry.This happens to Skopjani every day.

The reality of living in Skopje at the moment is pretty much dust, construction sites, faux-Baroque piles, other construction sites, and more dust.The city center has been transformed by the sudden appearance of hundreds of sculptures, monuments and

other supposed niceties; each hardly more than a meter from the next, and sometimes nearly on top of one another.

On the banks of the Vardar River, an array of buildings have been built in a mish-mash of faux-historical styles. Neoclassical, baroque, beaux-arts — it’s all here.

Kind of. In the city’s old bazaar — which was for a brief period the only respite from the constant construction — the building of a new square has brought cranes, dust and barriers to this former refuge. All of this, of course, is the result of the city’s megalomaniacally vast “Skopje 2014” project, which has turned the once-spacious city upside down.

I was asked by Kosovo 2.0 to write a profile of my city, the place where I grew up, and I must be honest: I have no idea what Skopje is today.

I don’t know where it’s heading, either.

Most people I talk to seem to share my confusion. One of my colleagues, Ana Alibegova, studies in Italy, only returning to the

— The reality of living in Skopje at the moment is pretty much dust, construction sites, faux-Baroque piles, other construction sites, and more dust.

One of the many new bridges that criss-cross the Vardar River in Skopje, Macedonia's capital.

Skopje's own Arc de Triomphe, named Porta Macedonia.

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— Skopje has given itself a fake face, in order to represent a history it never had — and ignore the past we actually did experience.

An overview of the construction being done on the new Foreign Ministry building in Skopje, Macedonia.

Macedonian capital once every three months. For her, as well as for myself, the new city is disorienting and chaotic.

“Every time I travel in from the airport,” Alibegova says, “I

look out of the window and say, ‘Wow, another new monument, another new building.’ I hardly recognize the place.”

Honestly, this “wow” is not an expression of amazement at the city’s new beauty, but rather a reaction of shock.

“I am pro-reconstruction, and pro-renovation and creation, but somehow (the recent changes leave me feeling) trapped in an urban chaos,” adds Alibegova.

“There is no intimacy left in Skopje, no feeling of ‘Skopje and me.’ Instead, the city appears to have been swallowed by mechanization and megalomania.”

Not everything has vanished.This past summer, a friend visited me from Ireland and was inspired by Vodno Mountain and by the natural beauty that still surrounds the city. “That must be one of the few places where Skopje keeps its soul hidden from the urban devils,” she said.

It does sometimes seem like things have taken a devilish turn. In Skopje, the public spaces no longer seem to exist

for the public, but rather for the hosting of monuments.

Many of these — such as the newly built Triumphal Arch — have no particular local meaning, and certainly no use. All of this comes at a high price; some estimates say that “Skopje 2014” has already cost Macedonians more than 500 million euros.

Skopje artist Matej Bogdanovski says Skopje 2014 is an anti-urban project, an imposing mass of meaningless aesthetic gestures whose vast scale turns it into a sort of historical “black hole” that swallows space and time.

“I don’t think only of the destroyed sites and buildings, the usurped spaces. ... I also think of the destroyed memories of so many city residents,” the artist says.

Bogdanovski is a prominent critic of “Skopje 2014,” and his digital collage project, “Skopje:You Will Shine With Joy,” documents what he sees as an invasion of public and historic space by the project.

Speaking of these works, he says, “They started as a

reaction to the suppressed ‘Architectural Uprising’ of 2009, in which a group of progressive young people, mainly architects, rebelled against the construction of the church on the city’s main square. I put the photos on my Facebook, and was blown away by the positive reactions I received.”

“It probably would have ended there, but a few months later, the city released its famous ‘Skopje 2014’ video in which the new vision for the city was presented. I cannot describe the mix of emotions that I had … from ‘This is not possible’ to ‘Can I be the only one that does not understand?”

Bogdanovski followed up his initial collage series with an exhibition in New York, where he again focused his attention on “Skopje 2014.”

“In a series of eight digitally altered photos, I intentionally increased the dimensions of the objects by several times, so that they dominate the environment, and people are reduced. In this way, I wanted

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Skopje: Lost among the monuments

to introduce my personal feeling of discomfort when passing near these facilities, which hung so ethereally over the public space — (all) overcrowding and kitsch,” he said.

Foreigners who visit Skopje tend to have similar feelings of shock and disbelief. Berlin journalist Maximilian Ulrich, who visited Skopje recently, says he loved Skopje for its friendly, easy-going people, but was shocked at its appearance. “I heard a lot about the monuments before I arrived, (but) when I saw it, I couldn’t believe it. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It’s so ugly and bombastic. For me, it looks like it was the work of a small child, who wants to present all of the action-figures he owns.”

Noting the project’s great expense, Ulrich says, “It was also shocking because I know that Macedonia is one of the poorest countries in Europe, (and) the government is spending so much money for the monuments.They could do better.”

Unfortunately, Skopje’s situation does not end with spent money and strange monuments.

Recently “Ploshtad Sloboda” — an organization that strongly condemns “Skopje 2014” — analyzed the city’s continuing destruction of its city center parks, citing a 75 percent decrease in urban green space over the past 10 years.

“That is not all because of “Skopje 2014” — some parks were destroyed or abandoned before that. But (it all)

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becomes even more terrifying once you’re aware of all that has been lost,” says Ploshtad Sloboda activist Nikola Maumoski. “Parks, squares, sidewalks, book bazaars ... and this is just to speak of physical things! This project has changed everything. No more logical urban solutions, no contemporary architecture, no functionality; instead, we get ancient columns, militaristic sculptures and dudes on horses.”

After the catastrophic earthquake of 1963, and the city’s internationally acclaimed reconstruction, Skopje began to call itself the “City of Solidarity.”

Today, it’s anything but. According to Maumoski, a better title might now be the “Capital of Kitsch.”

“Skopje has given itself a fake face, in order to represent a history it never had — and ignore the past we actually did experience.”

For many longtime Skopjani, there is this strange feeling — it’s like we hardly know the place. Ñ K Kristina Ozimec is a journalist from Skopje, Macedonia. She has worked for Kapital daily newpaper, Fokus magazine and Deutsche Welle.

Tirana as art: From city to citizen Albanian capital's image IS increasingly defined by its representation in art text by Eriola Pira / PhotoS by OLSON LAMAJ

Ex-mayor Edi Rama's "Return to Identity" program has seen many formerly-drab Tirana buildings come to life as artists splash vibrant patterns across their once-gray walls.

— Contemporary art in Albania looks a lot like Tirana.That doesn’t mean that, like Tirana, art is in a state of transition from isolation under communism to global capitalism, but that contemporary art in Albania is all about Tirana, or more abstractly, the city.What follows is the story of how Tirana became both a subject of art and a place for it.

Let’s begin with the premise that the painting of Tirana’s building facades is the most comprehensive, compelling and contentious public art project of its kind 20

“Tirana is an open source to contemporary art, offering an unprecedented interaction between artists and the public, attracting an ever-growing number of visitors and tourists. As the city continues its strive on the way toward the future, the spectacle of colors, already turned into political investment for development, unfolds every day and lies in wait for its continuation.”

— Edi Rama, ex-mayor

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— both in scope and context.

What began as part of the 2000-03 mayoral campaign, titled “Return to Identity,” the mass painting of the city’s facades took on a life of its own within the framework of the second Tirana Biennial and other public art or private initiatives, as developers and citizens adopted the mayor’s project.The city’s post-socialist landscape was used as a blank canvas in an attempt to aestheticize space, improve its image, and project a European cultural identity, all while preparing the ground for its commodification, the privatization of public space, and the free flow of global capital.Thanks in part to “Dammi i Colori,” a 2003 video documentary by Albanian artist Anri Sala, both the coloring project and the man behind it — the artist-turned-mayor, Edi Rama — were celebrated for exhibiting art’s political efficacy and were catapulted onto the international stage.

The new and improved image of Tirana became the city’s brand: instantly recognizable and heavily invested with cultural capital as Tirana entered the global imagination.

Tirana wasn’t a particularly

prominent subject for artistic investigation until Rama enlisted art as an instrument for shaping both the city and perceptions of it, changing its material landscape and its image. As the iconic image of the colored facades came to stand in for Tirana itself, forging a new and ameliorative identity and relationship among the city, its inhabitants and the outside world, there emerged a need

to participate in the making, to negotiate the meaning, or contest the power of such an image.The project “Optimistic Violation,” curated by Anri Sala and Hans Ulrich Obrist for the Tirana Biennial in 2003, commissioned six international artists to submit designs as a continuation of Rama’s facade-painting project.The proposed works of Olafur Eliasson, Dominique Gonzalez Foerster, Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija were completed, making Tirana a bona fide work of art.

Primarily through the Tirana Biennial, the city became

both the site of art — churning out new public and private spaces for its exhibition — as well as the subject and source of artistic inspiration.The 2005 biennial’s exhibition spaces included the basement of the large, then-unbuilt commercial and residential complex Villa Goldi.The 2009 edition was held at Hotel Dajti and was largely dedicated to the responses to Tirana’s urban development, including architecture and the processes of urbanization rather than just the visual arts.

Tirana emerged as not only a ready-made image but also a city imagined as a geographical locale, as a historical context, and as a sociopolitical situation to which artists might respond.

neighbors or that of many developing cities, but thanks to Edi Rama’s colors, the image of “Tirana as Art” was “branded,” and thus linked to the global cultural economy.

The manner in which cities are both represented and become representations is central to their establishment as places of being and meaning for local communities and power structures. As cities vie for limited resources in a global economy, their visual representations, or “brands” — particularly those maintained through (public) art — are instrumental to their development of cultural capital, or mindshare.

Along with Tirana itself, the Albanian capital’s artists, artworks and efforts to conceive of “the city as art” have been welcomed into

participation in the art world predicated on the real or imagined expectation of representing and performing Tirana’s peculiar physical this difference,Tirana and experiential provided Albanian artists with qualities — its all that and more. identity and Tirana, with its image — have landscape serving as a — As the iconic image of the been shaped by repository of colored facades came to stand in visual the transition the aforementioned from communism for Tirana itself, forging a new ideological workings, to market and its image imbued and ameliorative identity and capitalism.The with international relationship among the city, its built landscape cultural capital, — already a inhabitants and the outside proved itself to be the composite consummate world, there emerged a need to representation of serious-cum-exotic a place, where the participate in the making, to subject for Et’hem Bey negotiate the meaning, or contest contemporary mosque coexists Albanian artists. And the power of such an image. with the Stalinist because it is equally architecture and compulsory that such postmodern glass work displays what — has become a “place” skyscrapers — has produced, writer Guillermo within — the international and is in turn reproduced, by Gómez-Peña art world.This inclusion was the city as an image. It is calls “a trans- and fueled by the logic of global ideologically, and visibly, inter-cultural sophistication contemporary art, which encoded with the challenges [...] a cool hybridity” rather dictates that local identities of its communist past, than presenting any real local and contexts be promulgated indeterminate present and antagonism or concerns, while the differences among aspirations for a European representations of Tirana have them be at once fetishized future.This image is no generally chosen to display and homogenized.With different from that of its the city as a singular and

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iconic facade.This facade, of course, conveniently — and not coincidentally — corresponds to the image required by neo-liberal economics, and by the demands of the international art world for new artistic practices, new products and new markets.

Take a quick look at the contemporary art made in Albania over the past decade or so, and the undeniable allure that Tirana — both the city specifically and urbanity in general — has held over the imagination of artists becomes all too obvious. In artists’ statements, critical texts, curatorial concepts, project proposals, exhibition titles, and in the work itself, one finds a curious abundance of concepts such as urbanism, modernization, development, architecture, landscape, space and the sense of place.

The trend is so predominant that one would be hard pressed to find local contemporary artists who have not dipped their proverbial brushes into the colors of the city. Even works

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that do not directly reference Tirana, but rather deal with the city and the urban experience in the abstract sense, do so within Tirana’s concrete discursive space, and using its visual vocabulary. For contemporary Albanian artists,Tirana has become too colorful and significant to ignore. And with the international art community paying attention — instigating urban art projects, participating in local exhibitions, collaborating with local artists, and ultimately presenting and mediating Tirana’s face (or facade) to the outside world — Tirana’s urban aesthetic has found a stage, a PA system and an audience.

The international presence and interest in Tirana is indicative of the prominent place that the city holds in local artistic discourse and production, where it is instrumental to its provision and its understanding. But the market for such art never materialized, in Albania or abroad, to the degree that the surplus of these works and critical conversations would lead you to believe it did.

Real or feigned, the interest in Tirana-centric art generated and circulated primarily in its own bubble.

But the story is not as simple as that. In representing and engaging with Tirana, these artists are actively making the capital into a “place”; a place where the physical and mental space are both repressive and expressive; a place where art is instrumentalized to conceal repression, with the hope that the colors don’t bleed once it rains. It is a place — it is home — with which artists

must make amends, it is a place they belong to, and a place within whose confines they must make room for themselves as artists, especially if they are to participate in the international art world.

Through their work, these artists re-imagine not only their subjective relationship to the city and to the transforming social reality, but they also re-imagine the city itself, as both subject matter and site.The city created by, and presented in, these works has both structured and structuring qualities.These representations of Tirana have established a social typology and urban iconography that contribute to the making of the city as a discursive phenomenon. In the context of contemporary Albanian art, this has been achieved in two primary ways.

The overwhelming majority of urban aesthetic practices in Albania fall along a spectrum defined, at one pole, by the city serving as a subject for art, and on the other, by the city as art itself.

For many artists, the architecture of the city and of the urban sprawl Tirana experienced after the 1990s kosovo 2.0

serves as a proxy for contemporary Albania. In these works, the city is documented and encountered as a work of visual and spatial art, with Tirana’s architecture presented as the evidence for and expression and embodiment of social relations and ideologies in the capital.

In contemporary Albanian painting and photography, the architecture of Tirana appears as sculpture; it is surrounded entirely by empty space and can be seen from all sides. In instances when sweeping vistas of the city are offered, the city’s structure and structures appear abstracted and stand in supposed isolation from the social forces and processes that have shaped them. As fragments of the city’s urban experience, these works re-align it in accordance with the artist’s conceptual vision.

Concerned with description and visual surface, rather than narrative and explanation, these works are not, in their essence, rhetorical, but rather graphic.The risk that comes with such representations is that they reduce the city to the usual tropes of the post-socialist city.The emphasis on form, distinct

Mixed-use apartment buildings on Bardhyl Street assert the Albanian capital's new identity in tropical pastels.

from the sociopolitical dimensions that actively constitute and are constituted by the built space — present a dynamic, contested space as being finished, or complete.

The aestheticization of space in many of these works detaches Tirana-as-subject from its political processes, and diverts critique from socioeconomic to visual properties. In this fashion, it frames the discourse within neoliberal terms.

For other artists, the city does not simply manifest at the physical, visual level, but at the level of a social, political and cultural experience.Theirs is a city that creates, communicates and challenges spatial identity and social relations. Such artists are concerned with intervening in the landscape and challenging the dominant narratives and perceptions of the urban space and experience. For the most part, they take a performative approach to the city, entering

into direct relationships with the city’s built space.This takes the form of site-specific works performed and presented in public; they directly engage with the city and its citizens at an everyday level that operates under, and counter to, the city’s spatial and social dictates.

These sort of interactions can assume a broad array of tactical forms, ranging from the visual and poetic to the activist and socially engaged.

created; through these works, the city-as-a-place-ofmeaning is constructed.

Through this brief overview, Tirana emerges as both a physical space and as an idea: a phenomenon defined both by structures and by the repetition of specific visual images and signs. And though the broad brushstrokes of this overview may seem to imply that one way of representing and engaging with Tirana They approach the city not — or one way of making art as a historical theme or an — is preferable to another, I aesthetic subject, but as an would contend that this isn’t image to be decoded.They always the case.The static seek to reveal what lies visual arts continue to possess beneath the representations aesthetic and political potency, favored by the political and even if they are less financial powers that control it. participatory, or less Through visual immediately “public.”The representations, as well as interpretation of space in performative and visual terms is critical to interventional tactics, these rendering visible the processes works offer new ways of and consequences of how a seeing, imagining and living in society perceives itself. As the the city.The city’s image, like relationship between urban the city itself, is being development and art grows re-envisioned, performed and stronger, representations of the

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city need to be analyzed in terms of their spatial politics: What sort of social order does a given work represent? From what sort of social order would it emerge?

Contemporary art in Albania, insofar as it ignores these questions, risks segregating the image of urban space from the social concerns that define and produce it.

This is not to say the city as a subject has been exhausted or is off limits, but that, as the city changes so does the critical role that artists play in its representation. In the end, art may not only serve as midwife to the birth of the city’s image, but also for that of the citizen. ÑK Eriola Pira is a New York-based curator and writer.

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zAGREB: Public spaces, public clashes Croatia's capital struggles with its past as it grows and moves forward text by Danijela Simrak

"I will not give up Warsaw Street", a slogan on a balcony in Zagreb protesting against changes proposed for the street.

PHOTO: SMILJKA GUSTAK

— In many ways, Zagreb could be called a typical Balkan capital.Where it departs from the norm, however, is in the fierce pride of its populace. “Purgeri” — the demonym favored by Zagreb’s inhabitants — are a people in love with their city ... even when they hate it. In this country, we love to hate the things that we love; you may need to be Croatian to understand this complicated emotion.

Right now, we hate two new fountains recently inaugurated by Mayor Milan Bandic.We hate them because 24

they cost more than €2 million and they do nothing for the city’s appearance — unless you are a fan of tacky light shows. Even if this is the case, though, you would have a difficult time enjoying this particular spectacle, which is isolated in the middle of traffic, far from pedestrian-friendly zones.

Lately, it seems, we Purgeri are busy hating a lot of new and expensive things.We hate the ugly new trams, which proved useless this past winter when they couldn’t even handle a little snowstorm.The old ones, of course, could cut

right through the snow — that’s right, everything old is better. Purgeri are a nostalgic bunch.We miss Zagreb as it once was, before businessmen ran the show and forever

changed the landscape of our city.

Ban Josip Jelacic Square is the heart and soul of Zagreb, the most meaningful public space in the city. Named after

Part of the "Zivi zid za Varsavsku" ("Human Wall for Warsaw Street") campaign.

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— Though Horvatincic presented his project as being in the greater public interest, few could understand how another mall in a city with low purchasing power could really represent the serving of a public need. backgrounds.This is where old people come to complain about the indecency of the young; where celebrities mingle with beggars; where artists clash with realists.

Conceptual artist TomISLAV Gotovac during his famous 1981 street performance in Zagreb, Croatia.

PHOTOS x3: IVAN POSAVEC

the celebrated supporter of Croatian independence — whose statue in the square’s center “watches over” the passing crowds — this square is a place for such varied things as entertainment and public protests. Colorful and diverse, it gathers people from all generations and

suitable to the political occasion.

At this point, Ban Jelacic Square became the Square Of The Republic. On July 25, 1947, the famous statue of Ban was secretly dismantled In November 1981, in the middle of the night and renowned conceptual artist removed from view. To Tom Gotovac walked out of a understand the significance of neighboring doorway and this act, one must understand advanced toward the square. the degree to which Jelacic is He was naked and was yelling, a near-sacred figure in “Zagreb, I love you!”

Croatian history. At the time, Occasionally, he would lay the removal of his statue was down on the ground and kiss considered a clear sign of the the concrete.When he got to future this country would the square, police intervened, have in the newly established putting a halt to the “radical Yugoslav union.With this act, performance” and arresting one statue became a symbol Gotovac. In Zagreb, however, of the whole nation.

Gotovac is remembered After the death of the fondly as “the guy who got communist regime and the naked in Ban Josip Jelacic establishment of the Square.” Purgeri appreciate a Democratic Republic of person who loves — and Croatia, the new government knows how to use — our city. was ready to fight the communist legacy. In 1990, In the name of the the Square of the Republic square regained its original name, As the political climate in and on Oct. 16 — Jelacic’s Croatia changed, so did the birthday — the renovated names of the public spaces. statue of Ban was brought When communists rose to back to the square. power after World War II, the Lenucijeva Potkova, or the names of squares, streets and Lenuci horseshoe, is a institutions that had complex consisting of seven previously honored squares and parks, built (as prominent Croatians were might be guessed) in the changed to things more shape of a horseshoe.The idea

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came from 19th-century architect Milan Lenuci, and the complex — which hosts institutions such as the State Archive, the Academy of Science and Art, and the National Theatre — is perhaps the most beautiful collection of public spaces in downtown Zagreb.

At the east end of the horseshoe lies the notoriously titled Square of Marshal Tito.

The fact that one of the most significant public spaces in the city bears the name of a man who ran the bloody communist regime does not sit well with many Purgeri.

For the past seven years, protesters have gathered in the square on May 1 for an initiative called Krug za Grad (Circle for Square); the goal is to rename the square, and to restore its pride of place within the capital.

Within the square’s immediate radius — a few hundred meters, say — lie institutions such as the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Law, the Academy of Dramatic Arts, and a new building built to host both the University’s Music Academy as well as Croatia’s National Theatre. It is in light of this circumstance that activists feel the square should

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Citizens gather on Warsaw Street in support of the "Zivi zid za Varsavsku" campaign.

PHOTO: LOVRO RUMIHA

carry either the name it had for almost 30 years, Sveucilisni trg (University Square) or Kazalisni trg (Theatre Square), the name it held immediately before its current designation.

So far, all the efforts of the activists and citizens have been denied.

Public spaces and private interests Marshal Tito Square is not the only contested public space in Zagreb. In the case of Cvjetni, the capital witnessed a study in how private commerce can alter the face of the city just as drastically as can political upheaval.

When businessman Tomislav Horvatincic announced his plan to demolish a few buildings and build a shopping center (along with the usual array of apartment blocks) on one of the most beloved and picturesque city 26

squares, Purgeri reacted with shock.Though Horvatincic presented his project as being in the greater public interest, few could understand how another mall in a city with low purchasing power could really represent the serving of a public need. Even more troubling was that the plans called for the elimination of part of Zagreb’s “pedestrian zone.”

The city council, however, decided that the project was indeed a great public work of some sort, and approved construction of the complex.

Existing urban plans and regulations were altered to suit the investor.Though activists from Zelena Akcija (Green Action) and Pravo na Grad (Right to the City) joined citizens on the construction site to protest the project, the money and private interests won over public demands.

Zagreb’s valuable city center pedestrian zone, now cut in half, became a large entrance to an only partially public garage.Though the developers of the shopping center had promised to provide two internal halls for cultural events, public forums, debates and presentations, Zagreb’s city council ended up rejecting even this compromised offering, saying that the city is not responsible for organization of such events.They could, however, co-finance the halls, which resulted in the developer’s remaining free to sublet them for commercial use.

Finally, this past March — after years of protests and civil actions — Zagreb’s city council annulled the regulation changes that had allowed Horvatincic to subvert the city’s urban plan and go through with his mega-project.The public kosovo 2.0

places of Zagreb are now supposedly protected from capitalist private interests and megalomaniacal construction projects. But plans for new private developments continue to shimmer on the city’s horizons, each promising its own “decoration” of Zagreb’s public space.

Will we ever be free from such invasions? Ñ K Danijela Simrak is a freelance journalist based in Zagreb. She graduated from the Faculty of Political Science with a degree in journalism.

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dissecting prishtina the capital is a city by name but a zombie in spirit âžł #5 PuBlic sPace sPring/summer 2013

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the thousAnd-yeAr history of the city is reAlly only A Prelude to the humAn constructions we know todAy. so much so thAt, with few excePtions, whAt we cAll "cities" in most of history would likely QuAlify todAy As little more thAn lArge villAges. the most recent develoPment in cities is the continued growth of the modern city, which emerged About 200 yeArs Ago. by the 19th century, cities hAd so extensively shAPed euroPeAn sociAl, economic And PoliticAl life thAt the rise of the modern industriAl city is little more thAn An extension of the cities of old. text By Besnik Pula / Photos By atDhe mulla

— the Late medieVaL PoLitieS of euroPe were built on the institutional infrastructure of its cities, and they were beginning to crack the feudal institutions of agrarian europe. across the large cities in europe today one can still f ind the remnants of the once-bustling medieval urban nuclei, the remains of fortif ications and of old city walls. it was in this period that cities assumed a key role, after the expansion of the islamic caliphate across the middle east, northern africa, and southern europe. Soon, republican institutions that had developed in the medieval cities spread throughout feudal europe. medievalist henri Pirenne says in “medieval cities,” “Without islam, the frankish empire would probably never have existed, and charlemagne, without muhammad, would be inconceivable.” ➳ 30

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One of Prishtina's most densely populated areas; the apartment complexes in the Ulpiana District are home to a large number of the city's residents.

The inside of the Kosovo Parliament building built in the 1970s, which has been used by the various governments in power ever since.

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Apartment complexes, like these in the Tophane District, built close to ONE ANother in order to accommodate Prishtina's growing population.

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Situated between the Green Bazaar and the Post and Telecom building, this crossroad in the Ulpiana District is often densely packed with traffic during the day.

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— unlike medieval cities, where the market was typically confined to a specific area, in capitalist modernity, the entirety of urban space succumbed to the fetish.

the rise of capitalist modernity marked a break with the medieval cities. in 19th-century Paris, urban life and culture embodied this rise. Growing consumption, especially by the nascent bourgeoisie, involved changes in both the meaning of cultural objects and their relationship with temporality. this brought marx’s analysis of the commodity fetish — commodities as objects possessing their own virtues while masking relations between people — fully into the urban space. the public’s space was being overtaken by the market. But unlike medieval cities, where the market was typically conf ined to a specif ic area, in capitalist modernity, the entirety of urban space succumbed to the fetish. american public intellectual Lewis mumford described the city in part as “the theater of social action.” But with the commodity fetish, the urban theater was transformed into a site of consumption. capitalist modernity introduced changes in the social composition of the city, as well. among these was the emergence of a new social group, the “boheme”: artists and writers who usually came out of the ranks of the bourgeoisie. they were often critical of bourgeois culture, yet politically unattached to the growing proletariat and its revolutionary tendencies. their art, found in charles Baudelaire’s poetry and the work of honore de Balzac, introduced the notion of viewing social life in a detached and disengaged manner, a symptom of alienation from the social world.

PlannInG as PoWer it was in the 19th century that Baron von haussmann transformed Paris, annihilating the medieval city and old quarters, creating new urban spaces centered on wide boulevards, organizing city blocks into a grid, and incorporating a controlled, rationalized, birds-eye view of the urban plan. in destroying the old city, haussmann’s remaking of Paris served both the interests of f inancial speculators investing in urban real estate, as well as the regime of napoleon iii. the monarch wished to put an end to the rioting and protests of Paris’ popular classes by establishing open urban spaces that could be easily surveilled and placed under the control of the army in moments of crisis. the practice of urban planning and the top-down organization of urban space in this era proved capable of weaving together capital and state in opposition to the growing political demands of popular classes. in the 20th century, urbanization and industrialization became the clarion calls of modernizing elites. after 1945, the world divided into new power blocs (“capitalist” and “socialist”), and the collapse of the old imperial order put decolonization and development at the top of the global agenda. outside the power blocs, the third World was set to tread in a series of steps once traversed by the West, albeit at a more rapid pace. the goal was to politically and administratively master modernization. urbanization would follow a similar path as in 19th-century europe. as industrialization took off, cities would grow, societies would become more literate and mobile, and values would change to ref lect the “modern” culture of participation and consumerism. Societies where such linear processes failed to take place were accused of being maladapted to the demands of modernity due to the continued strength of traditional society. a neW urbanIZatIon in the Soviet union and socialist eastern europe, a politically managed economy also produced a politically determined path of urbanization. While cities and industries grew, collectivization and legal restrictions on migration preserved relatively large rural populations. it is in this situation that urbanization in the traditionally agrarian southwest part of the Balkans also took place. it is not that cities in the Balkans are a

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creation of the 20th century, of course. But cities in the ottoman europe never grew as quickly as those in northwestern europe. Population density in the rugged and mountainous terrains of the ottoman europe was lower than other parts of europe. in fact, economic historians point out that population scarcity was so high for most of the 16th and 17th centuries in ottoman europe that labor shortages left large swaths of fertile land unpopulated. the agrarian ottoman economy favored small, rural communities and limited long-distance trade as a contributor to growth. the merchant class in the Balkans remained small and dealt mainly in local goods. at the same time, sea transportation and the atlantic orientation of europe after the 16th century undercut the historical trade routes through the ancient Balkans. Long-distance trade in the empire was concentrated in istanbul and major ports such as thessaloniki. So the empire’s peripheral lands sustained themselves as low-productivity, subsistence-based agrarian hinterlands. “the ‘reaya’ (common people) produce the wealth,” and “the sultan keeps the ‘reaya’ by making justice reign,” was part of the empire’s ruling ideology, a so-called “circle of equity.” these conditions persisted the longest in the ottoman regions of albania, Kosovo and macedonia because urbanization accompanied the formation of new nation-states in other former ottoman regions. But it was not realized until well into the 20th century in these corners of the former empire. in the case of Kosovo, political interest in urbanization did not arrive until after World War ii, with the birth of the new socialist Yugoslavia and its drive for rapid industrial development. bIrth of a cItY this is where modern Prishtina emerges. in 1945, Prishtina was a small town of about 20,000 inhabitants. turkish was the prevailing language of its residents.

Like urban dwellers in most of Kosovo’s towns, they used the old imperial language to distinguish themselves from the albanian speakers and Serbian speakers in the surrounding villages.

Prishtina and Kosovo came out of a gruesome war burdened with colonial domination by the land’s post-ottoman imperial ruler, Serbia. Serb leaders identif ied muslim albanians and turkish speakers as unwanted elements in the reclaimed region of “old Serbia.” So Belgrade employed a series of policies of population expulsion, accompanied by direct colonization by Serbs and montenegrins. these colonists were brought to reclaim what political leaders called Serbia’s rightful heritage in Kosovo. though in governing the newly conquered Kosovo, Belgrade sought the cooperation of Kosovo’s albanian land-owning elite. the end of World War ii placed Kosovo under a new regime and an entirely new political project of state-directed, socialist industrial development. the effects were evident by the 1950s, but Kosovo’s industrial transformation did not take off until 1965, with the establishment of the federal fund for underdeveloped regions. Kosovo was allotted some 40 percent of the total funds. the provincial leadership demanded this assistance to help the ailing region as it fell behind the rest of Yugoslavia. much of the money went toward urban development, especially in Prishtina. Postcard images are common even today of the city’s new neighborhoods of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period some recall as Prishtina’s “glory days.” the structure of modern Prishtina ref lects this history; the relics of Yugoslav socialist developmentalism lie on top of the few remnants of the old ottoman market town. direct administrative power was established with the f irst buildings of local government — including the municipal building and the current government building — in a kind of small-scale, less-impressive, quasi-haussmannian style. though rather modest by world standards, these new symbols of power ravaged the old ottoman-style city center, the heart of old Prishtina. #5 PuBlic sPace sPring/summer 2013

— Postcard images are common even today of the city’s new neighborhoods of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period some recall as Prishtina’s “glory days.”

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the development of the new center, that narrow stretch of about a halfkilometer that persists today, also demanded destruction of the old city. this decisively shifted the development of the city west and south, toward the f lat plains of fushe Kosove, and away from the hillsides into which the old city had been tucked. the new terrain allowed for the residential high-rise construction that characterized city growth in the 1970s and the early 1980s, including the new neighborhoods of ulpiana, dardania and Bregu i diellit (Sunny hill).

— Prishtina grew mainly through the immigration of outsiders, and today their descendants vastly outnumber the families that lived in the city in 1945.

movInG uP the rise of urban Prishtina parallels the creation of modern Kosovo. the city has long been a magnet for non-Prishtinians. indeed, like most cities, Prishtina grew mainly through the immigration of outsiders, and today their descendants vastly outnumber the families that lived in the city in 1945. But in the Yugoslav period, this migration was controlled. People moved for institutional reasons: to attend gymnasium or university, for a new job (especially in the expanding administrative sector), or to unite with family members. in contrast to today, economic despair was an uncommon reason for moving to the city, not because there was no such thing — unemployment in socialist Kosovo was never less than 25 percent — but because the city’s employment opportunities were little better than anywhere else. and it would have been hard to f ind a place to live, because enterprises controlled access to residential units. there were few possibilities for private initiative. during the apartheid 1990s, there were even fewer reasons to move to the city. But this population dynamic shifted after 1999, with Kosovo’s transformed economy and the promise of a new state. during the war of 1999, Serbian forces emptied Prishtina of most albanian residents, though the city was spared the worst physical damage. after the war, expansion resumed, along with attempts to regulate urban development. now largely under private control, problems with growth were exacerbated by weak postwar governance that allowed squatting and usurpation of public and private property by gangs. a f lood of foreign nationals arrived in the city as part of the united nations mission in Kosovo (unmiK) unmiK and other international organizations, and they carried pockets full of hard currency to spend on rental properties, igniting a real estate boom. death’s dIsruPtIon among the casualties of postwar disorder was the prominent architect rexhep Luci, who was killed in 2000 by still-unknown assailants. Luci had tried in vain to prevent Prishtina’s uncontrolled development and to bring order to urban growth. he organized the conference “Vision for Prishtina, 2000-05” just before his slaying, but his vision proved elusive. his death marked the end of an era for the city and was followed by a period of “wild” expansion and massive disruption in the urban social fabric. this disturbance was due not only to the arrival of Kosovo’s new foreign masters (who ruled off icially) and the local strongmen (who dominated informally), but also to the tidal wave of people arriving from rural areas. they f led destroyed homes and ruined local economies. contrary to the past, economic despair now drove migration into the city. Sheer opportunism and the hope for quick prof its lured others. the war hit rural areas particularly hard, and afterward, cheap, imported food f looded local markets, undermining local agriculture. Prishtina’s new service economy — including the international organization sector — seemed to create opportunities for gainful employment, especially for the young, though jobs were often short-lived. among cities, ➳

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The "Kosovo A" power plant on the outskirts of Prishtina powers the country's capital, which is also its largest city. In fact, Kosovo is on the verge of urban primacy, in which a disproportionate amount of the population lives in a single city.

Ulpiana is one of several neighborhoods of Prishtina that boomed in the 1970s and 1980s with the construction of many residential high-rise buildings.

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Developers are so eager to construct apartment buildings in Prishtina today that they wedge the projects into tight spots, some nearly on top of busy streets. The new living spaces accommodate the influx of visitors from other countries working for NGOs, as well as people migrating from the countryside to the capital for better economic opportunity.

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Prishtina offered the only economic hope. industrial collapse led to the ruin of Kosovo’s other urban centers. former industrial engines mitrovica and Gjakova were thrown into deep poverty.

By 2008, when Kosovo declared its independence, Prishtina had assumed a new image, a symbol of new wealth and political power under the rapacious capitalism of postwar transformation. it carried a politico-economic consensus that Kosovo scholar agon hamza calls “newborn ideology.” on the edGe Kosovo is today at risk of “urban primacy,” a condition in which a single city contains a disproportionate percentage of a country’s urban population and population in general. it is common throughout the developing world, where the pace of urban concentration has led to miserable conditions for the poor in informal settlements, like the “favelas” of Brazil, the shantytowns of South africa, and semi-formal settlements like Bathore in tirana. the strength of social ties in rural Kosovo, and the support many receive from family members abroad, has kept the population shift in check for now, but this may not last.

Kosovo’s traditional industrial sectors have not been renewed, and more legal obstacles stand in the way of migrating abroad. People will continue to seek refuge in Prishtina. a city is a social institution before it is a physical structure, mumford argues. among the more serious problems with modern Prishtina is the failure of social institutions to develop and strengthen ties of urban association and self-organization. the city’s segmented social fabric is apparent to anyone who spends time there. also evident is the expectation that all solutions be resolved from the top-down, and that “they” are to blame (the politicians, the developers, the newcomers, the foreigners, etc.) for the cities’ failures. “community” — “bashkesi” — is a word with little meaning in the city and tends to recall the failed attempts by the Yugoslav state to encourage participation through local community units, the famed “bashkesi lokale.” they still exist, albeit in degraded form, as units of municipal administration and channels for political party cronyism. uncontrolled growth, high migration, increased poverty, the risk of intensifying urban primacy, street crime, infrastructural mismanagement, the failure of the city to weave a social fabric — these have stagnated Prishtina at the stage it has been in since the city’s modern birth. it is a city in name but a zombie in spirit. it remains politically enervated and permanently subject to the whims of political and economic forces that lie beyond its control. — K

— among the more serious problems with modern Prishtina is the failure of social institutions to develop and strengthen ties of urban association and self-organization.

Besnik Pula is a historical sociologist and political economist and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Pula was born and raised in Prishtina.

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Monuments Without a Home ~

Symbols of Yugoslavia are left to decay in today's world text By Vesa SahatCiu / ILLUSTRATIONS BY DRITON SELMANI

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“I dream of a Europe without monuments, that is, without monuments of death and destruction. Perhaps monuments to love, to joy, jokes and laughter.”

— Bogdan Bogdanovic, architect

— Discussions about the cultural heritage of the former Yugoslavia are often isolated to banal comments on websites and in coffee shop conversations. Some observers lack desire — perhaps from intellectual laziness — to treat this historical period and its effects in a more serious manner. They don’t want a debate any deeper or more objective than asking, “Is this heritage Albanian or not?” or “If we support the protection of this heritage, are we patriots, or not?”

Reducing the debate over this period to degrading terms like “traitor” and “non-Albanian” from the outset misinterprets the former Yugoslavia by displacing and depriving it of historical context. Such simplification also denies the role of Albanians in its construction.

Former Yugoslav monuments, together with objects, streets, parks and squares, are not simply Serbian: They are Yugoslav.

And because Albanians were part of it, the monuments remain part of our heritage. So, then, what are these monuments that make up our inheritance? Are they important to us? Do they have a historical or cultural value?

The separation of Yugoslavia from the Eastern Bloc alliance in 1948 and the soured relationship between Tito and Stalin had more than just political fallout in Yugoslavia; it also influenced art and culture. Socialist Realism, a doctrine almost unquestionable in the Eastern Bloc, was immediately replaced by a new conceptual and aesthetic approach. Unlike in the Soviet Union and Albania, this new milieu did not have the rigidity of Socialist Realism, allowing for a freedom that led to abstract forms, deeply influenced by the Modernist current in the West.

However, the topics under development remained entirely within the framework of socialist ideology, including memorials dedicated to soldiers of the anti-fascist World War II. The square celebrating brotherhood and unity in the center of Prishtina is called “A monument dedicated to the fallen fighters” and was designed by Miodrag Zivkovic in 1961. Architect Bogdan Bogdanovic designed a monument in Mitrovica dedicated to Albanian and Serbian partisans in the anti-fascist

war. These were fresh forms. Bogdanovic acknowledged Tito was not culturally imbued and did not know trends in art.

But the leader was eager to engage artists who would break from the Soviet template, Bogdanovic said. Tito wanted a new movement to represent the memory and identity of the Yugoslav federation. After Tito saw Bogdanovic’s abstract works, with floral motifs and totemic shapes, he commissioned the artist’s project.

From 1948 to 1980, Yugoslavia’s monuments were outside typical classification in either Western capitalist or Eastern communist styles. It was deeply influenced by the modernist ideas of the time, and designers were free to explore the ideas of modernist architects Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, as well as surrealism and other trends. This unfettered creation allowed ideas from elsewhere to filter through the locality and the social and political specifics of Yugoslavia. This period produced monuments undoubtedly specific to the former Yugoslav regions.

This was also when Kosovo experienced a dramatic move forward in its conceptions of art and architecture.Without this period, we would not have had the spasm of modern art characterized by the works of Muslim Mulliqi, Xhevdet Xhafa, Nysret Salihamixhiqi and others.

Apart from the political and ideological perspective, and as a supranational federation, Yugoslavia aimed to create a visual language and a collective memory that included all of its nationalities. If there was something anathema to Yugoslavia, it was a return to old, nationalist sentiments and animosities.

Furthermore, this was in the ideological and political context of post-World War II, where positions of the left and right were more important for political and social organization than for nationalism and national identity.

So using those frameworks to analyze Yugoslavia’s cultural heritage is to engage in historical revisionism. Conclusions about the past should not be based exclusively on political, social or ideological sentiments of the present. In fact, first, they should consider the dynamics of the past, and in this case, the

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historical context of the Yugoslav period.

It’s clear these monuments, even today, are not Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Montenegrin, Macedonian nor Albanian.

For evidence, one need only to notice that they are neglected by their host countries and left to crumble in all the regions of the former Yugoslavia. We are all ambivalent, if not outright antagonistic, toward these monuments. Resurgent nationalist sentiments leave no room for monuments with no national identity. There’s no space for these relics when some are busy rewriting history, as is Macedonia with kitsch and historically incongruent monuments. Who needs monuments that are neither entirely Serbian, nor entirely Albanian, but consist of both?

They could, however, be viewed, at least from the perspective of art history, as testimonies to Kosovar modernism. They can be sources of inspiration and knowledge for a new generation of artists and architects. Maybe they will even endure — if the Prishtina Municipality doesn’t follow through with razing Brotherhood and Unity Square to build a much-discussed parking lot.

Observers have characterized the surrealist, modernist style of Yugoslav monuments as “futuristic.” And it’s appropriate, because these are monuments without history. It’s more than correct to say these monuments appear to be from the future than from a long-gone past. They simply have no space in the historical precedent we value today. At most, they are leftovers, aberrations in the flat and uniform flow of our history.

— Observers have characterized the surrealist, modernist style of Yugoslav monuments as “futuristic.” And it’s appropriate, because these are monuments without history.

Vesa Sahatciu completed her bachelor’s degree in art history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and her master’s degree in contemporary art theory at Goldsmiths at the University of London. In Kosovo she worked for the National Gallery of Kosovo and as a columnist for the Express daily.

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an artist in search oF alternative spaces text By FarhaD mirza / Photos By maJlinDa hoxha

AlbAn muJA sees PrishtinA As A city of wAsted oPPortunities - but he Also sees solutions.

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“Everything that used to be here is no more.”

—

— LamentinG the choiceS of Prishtina’s city planners, alban muja directs my attention to a tiny steel fence, circling a chopped-up tree in the Zahir Pajaziti square. “they chop down an old tree, and then they put a fence around it.

Who are they protecting it from?” i am certain he’s being rhetorical, but then he mutters an answer under his breath: “Probably themselves.” muja is like that, he runs toward an idea with an erratic energy and then suddenly splinters, reminding one of a pinball machine. he knows the streets well, and he is also well-known in the streets. We pause every so often, as he bounces from one greeting to another, basking briefly but consistently in every hug that follows. everything about him, from his wavy, saltand-pepper hair, to the way he twists his mustache under his baggy eyes, spells out artist. he seems to exist as a performance in the collective mind of the streets, as if he were a rumor spread by life. as we start roaming the streets, i look for their names, but excepting the obvious targets, there is little information on offer. muja’s documentary “Blue Wall red door,” which he made with Yll citaku, explores how people in Prishtina orient themselves, and what for them is the main object or building that they use for their orientation.

Street names have changed so often in Kosovo that people tend not to use them as a navigational tool. muja quips how “the biggest challenge for Kosovars is when a foreigner with a map asks, 'Where is this street?'” most people, it seems, rely on buildings and monuments to figure out where they are at any given time. our conversation is sound-tracked and often intruded upon by a horde of industrial noises. “Prishtina is under construc#5 PuBlic sPace sPring/summer 2013

muja stands in front of an unfinished buiLding next to the city's centraL heating pLant.

tion,” muja says as a strange cacophony of tongues overwhelms us: the vowel-based drone of cement mixers, harsh consonants springing through the bare teeth of electric chainsaws, engines revving up and exhaling thunderous chapters of smoke.

Prishtina is in a crucial phase of remodeling its public persona, and muja is nervous about what will happen to the streets, as if the streets were the metaphorical arteries of the public consciousness.

Looking around, it becomes clear to me that Prishtina is going through the perils of puberty. it has become conscious of the fact that the desire it feels toward foreign observers needs to be solicited through a good impression. therefore, it has summoned all its surgeons and practitioners to alleviate the curse of post-war acne. these “urgent” renovations, though, have stretched out for a bit too long, leaving members of public like muja wondering if these constructions will ever come to fruition. “it’s very rare that you will see them fi nish a public construction.” What about private construction, i ask him? “there’s a different rule for private construction. there’s a different rule when it’s your money or my money.” approaching mother theresa Boulevard, muja is struck 49

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— Everything about him, from his wavy, salt-and-pepper hair, to the way he twists his mustache under his baggy eyes, spells out artist. He seems to exist as a performance in the collective mind of the streets, as if he were a rumor spread by life.

with a familiar grief that also translates as embarrassment. We observe the site of an abandoned building, and Muja doesn’t have to spell it out for me: For him, this is a reminder of Prishtina’s wasted opportunities.

“People don’t go to art, you have to bring art to the people.

You look at this building, it’s perfect for hosting art exhibitions, which is what Prishtina needs right now — a commercial art scene — but for years, this building has remained empty,” he says.

The front of the building, facing the boulevard, is mostly laced with advertisement posters and some incoherent graffiti — except for the “don’t litter” sign, which shows a figure binning a swastika. However, Muja’s grief turns into a frustrated excitement (to which I become an accomplice) as we circle the corpse of the building like vultures. He points out the features that still hint at the possibility of flesh.

Behind the building is a porch, where one can easily imagine a cheerful gathering: the sort with champagne glasses and all sorts of philosophical chatter about art. Opposite the building are empty huts that are too old to accommodate the standards of modern living, but they would be ideal as spaces for art studios. There are walls begging to be projected upon, and it almost hurts to see them so bare. “People have fought for it,” Muja explains the long, legal battle concerning the ownership of the building, which is disputed both publicly and privately, “but while they are deciding who owns it, why not do something with it?”

Muja has similar ideas for the Sports Stadium. A row of disused shops on the outer rim of the stadium provides the perfect opportunity for a unique marriage between sports and the arts — something the world has yet to see. With no residential settlements nearby, these spaces would be perfect for artists to work in and bands to rehearse in, but they remain in a perpetual state of sacrifice, waiting to be used commercially by shop owners.

We walk farther, over chipped pavement, under lights “that are actually meant for highways,” held in position by what appears to be a plastic flower pot. Muja says such neglect is a hangover from the war, when deliberate neglect was a subversive tool against the enemy. “During the war, the yard belonged to the enemy.” So, what was outside could rot because it was the enemy's loss. “I used to go out and smash streetlights, because the lights were a way to spot us easily. But there is no need for it today.”

We pass a monument depicting Mother Theresa. Her face has been vandalised in magic marker with someone’s nickname, and around her is a shallow ring of green, stagnant water. Most monuments in Prishtina receive similar levels of maintenance and Muja is inclined to take offense because he considers it disrespectful to the memory of the people Prishtina wishes to honor: “If you are going to do it, do it properly. But in Prishtina, things are either done wrong or not used properly.”

The Skanderbeg Statue, in front of the National Theatre, is the most curious of these monuments. It is in the honor of

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an abandoned buiLding sits on prishtina's main promenade, mother theresa bouLevard.

underneath the prishtina stadium, a warren of darK and empty spaces invite adaptive re-use.

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an unfinished buiLding in prishtina sits unused next to the city's centraL heating pLant.

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the sKanderbeg monument at the north end of mother theresa bouLevard, centraL prishtina.

— “People don’t go to art, you have to bring art to the people. You look at this building, it’s perfect for hosting art exhibitions, which is what Prishtina needs right now — a commercial art scene — but for years, this building has remained empty.” amid the signs and crowds of Kosovo's commerciaL core, mother theresa's statue stands on the pedestrian street named in her honor.

Gjergj Kastrioti (or Skanderbeg), who is an epic symbol of defiance and courage. during the 15th century, he legendarily fought off the ottomans for decades. curved sword in hand, he stands in the stirrups of a horse that is poised to leap. “But it has been copied from albania!” muja fumes with a touching desperation in his voice. he stands in front of the statue, almost imploring it to spill some originality on to the pavement, but it doesn't.

What is odd about the statue is its position within Kosovo's contemporary ties with turkey. it balances itself on a tightrope between two competing historical narratives, an act that essentially subverts its bravado into a comical awkwardness. recently, the Balkan trust for democracy appointed a group of 60 historians from 11 southeast european countries to revise regional history books, on the account of disputed claims about the nature of the ottoman occupation of the Balkans. there is controversy regarding what the history books in Kosovo shall say: did the ottomans forcefully occupy the Balkans, or were they just peaceful administrators who were actually welcomed here? if the latter is the choice of the day, then what does Skanderbeg represent if not an epic overreaction? “if they are going to rewrite the history books, then this statue has to go as well,” muja says. this doesn't seem to bother him, for he doubts he'll be hurt by the loss of a copied item.

Later, when we stand in front of the newborn monument — a collection of block letters, 3 meters high, that spells out neWBorn. it brandishes painted flags from of all the countries that helped to deliver Kosovo into independence, and i wonder if it holds the key to Kosovo’s identity issues. Kosovo is not, in fact, not newborn at all. it has past lives, histories, #5 PuBlic sPace sPring/summer 2013

several umbilical chords forming an intricate knot that it doesn't want to untangle. Kosovo's attempts at clarity come at the expense of a profound identity that seems to lunge at muja’s ankles from the dark, bottomless spaces between the pages of history books. finally, muja takes me to look at a skeletal construction site next to Prishtina's central heating system, far away from the center. apparently, it has been standing there as an unfinished project for years. as muja poses for a photo in front it, i notice how the insides of this site are covered in graffiti. i find these incoherent scribblings intriguing, because who would feel so passionately gregarious as to scribble these inarticulate ramblings in an obscure place like this? But “the medium doesn't matter. it doesn't matter how you tell a story, it is important that you tell it.” moreover, it doesn’t matter what the graffiti says, that it says anything is in itself a creative intervention that postulates a desire to make use of Prishtina’s eccentric deformities, such as this building itself. if Prishtina’s city planners do not take these self-evident truths into account, then Prishtina will not offer its best stories, but only the rattle of small talk. — K Hailing from Pakistan, Farhad Mirza is a freelance writer, an occasional journalist and an embittered victim of British immigration policy. He is embarking on writing an alternative travel guide to all the places a Pakistani can visit without requiring a visa. He is hoping he will live to tell the tale. Mirza is a former intern of Kosovo 2.0.

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Puppets, Kisses and Tear Gas: The struggle for public space in Chile Protesters rise up for their rights in a flourishing nation no longer unDER a regime's control text by Ines Pousadela / Photo by FabiAn NUNez Acevedo

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1. Students in Chile established common ground in their protests against the new democratic government's selective educational practices.

2. As the protests gained momentum, they started experiencing support from other members of Chilean society, not just students. The increase in numbers triggered a response from the Special Forces.

PHOTO: ANTITEZO

— “This is unacceptable, Santiago city center is under siege, citizens’ right to gather in Plaza Italia is being violated,” tweeted Camila Vallejo shortly before 11 a.m. Minutes later, she sent another alert: “The police order is to check the backpacks of all the students walking through the Alameda; this is true pillaging by the government.”

Barely four minutes later, she added: “Right-wingers are threatening democracy in our country once again, but their tear gas bombs do not intimidate us.”

It was the morning of Aug. 4, 2011, and secondary school students were trying, without government authorization, to take to the streets. They wanted a demonstration. Camila Amaranta Vallejo Dowling, then a 23-year-old geography major sporting a shiny nose ring, had recently been elected president of the Students’ Federation of the University of Chile and executive board member of CONFECH, the national confederation of student organizations. Beautiful, charismatic and a vocal Communist Party activist — presently running for the National Congress on the party ballot — she was described by The New York Times as the “world’s most glamorous revolutionary.” At home, however, she was repeatedly portrayed as a marionette under communist control and, rather unsurprisingly, she became the target of sexist attacks. According to her detractors, she was a person whose talents are more suited for a beauty contest than for political leadership.

Starting in April 2011, and lasting for most of the year, the student movement represented the largest mobilization process in Chile since democracy was restored in the early 1990s. Students pointed fingers at the entire political system, which they felt was maintaining a system of “educational apartheid.” Education was available to the rich, but not to the poor — and this situation was not only being upheld by the present right-wing government, but by its center-left predecessor, as well.

The students’ views, which held that exclusion and inequality were deforming Chilean society, quickly gained mass support. In the court of public opinion — as measured by opinion polls as well as by the large numbers of people who attended demonstrations — the students had something worthwhile to say. In ever-increasing numbers, people showed up to listen.

The movement became the largest mass protest in Chile’s recent history, and it wasn’t long before the students and their

PHOTO: ELI BERTARIA

supporters had to deal with the problems of an over-regulated public space.

There were forms to fill out, authorization requests to file, and lengthy negotiations with government officials about meeting places, routes and schedules. The students soon realized Chile’s public spaces were hardly public at all. Rather, they were state-owned spaces, and they were state-controlled.

University students tended to comply with those regulations more often, and more thoroughly, than secondary school students. These students, many of whom were from poorer, lessprestigious professional colleges, often overlooked the regulations and demonstrated without state authorization. These demonstrations, in turn, were often repressed. But even when all of the procedures were observed, police were quick to act when students strayed even slightly from the agreed-upon routes, or when they did not disperse at the required time.

As the demonstrations gathered the support of the people, they broadened their focus. Families and citizens marched alongside the students, and the events began featuring cultural performances, such as concerts. Often described as “parties” or “carnivals,” the demonstrations began to include things like elaborate costumes, face-painting, music, dancing, puppetshows, art installations and catchy slogans. All of this — as well as the violence that frequently ensued — was thoroughly documented by the demonstrators themselves. Hundreds of photographs and videos were taken, posted online and endlessly re-posted and discussed on blogs and social media.

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Puppets, Kisses and Tear Gas: The struggle for public space in Chile

Beyond massive street demonstrations, the movement’s occupation of Chile’s public spaces took various forms. Although strikes and marches were central to the process, a many supplementary strategies for the public presentation of demands took place.

Indeed, the repertoire of actions resorted to by the Chilean students stands out for its amazing variety.

Among them were lengthy occupations of secondary schools and universities, as well as a great number of brief — lasting from a few minutes to several hours — symbolic takeovers of other places.

These were frequently improvised and usually resulted in expulsion by police.

Among the targets favored for these “decentralized” (not ordered by student associations) occupations were government offices, political party headquarters and television channels.

Secondary education students also resorted to high-visibility hunger strikes. Other protests, often organized through social media, took the form of theater.

Among the most original and eye-catching of these productions were the flash mobs, which were performed by large groups in costumes and makeup. These contained elements such as symbolic suicides for education, either performed by the students themselves or with puppets representing hanged students; massive “kiss-ins” 56

for public education; ironic responses to current events such as the artificial beach set up in a central square in which students in swimsuits mocked changes made to their winter vacations; and, in late December, the installation of a giant mailbox in the Plaza de Armas in which citizens to deposit their “Christmas wishes” for education.

Other events targeted at maintaining public visibility included walks from distant towns toward Santiago or Valparaiso, the site of the National Congress, and an uninterrupted 75-day-long relay race around the presidential palace. Students also set up religiously inspired candle nights (“velatones”) to protest repression, and borrowed from human rights groups a strategy known as “exposure” (“funa”), targeted at unmasking “guilty” public officials.

Despite the festive atmosphere, massive mobilizations and, to a lesser extent, school occupations and other takeovers often ended with clashes with police, arrests and occasionally with looting and burnt vehicles. Clashes along the Alameda, one of Santiago’s main streets, invariably involved rock-throwing, barricades, mounted police, water cannons and tear gas. The presence of plainclothes officers was also reported.

Perhaps not surprisingly, confrontations usually began when the police attempted to disperse demonstrating students, or to evict protesters who were occupying buildings, because it was thought they shouldn’t be there; there was a feeling that these actions were necessary and should have been allowed to proceed. Though authorities justified the evictions on grounds of potential damage, students claimed the lion’s share of damage occurred during the evictions themselves, and even reported police “planting” Molotov cocktails and other such things to incriminate students. It was often the very presence of police that prompted violence, and not the activities or intentions of the students themselves.

On the other hand, masked youths known as “encapuchados” (literally, “hooded persons”) often took advankosovo 2.0

tage of the police presence to initiate violence or provoke pitched battles.

The people behind the masks were mostly radicalized, underclass students, and not people who were involved with student organizations. Though they were a small minority, the mainstream media tended to equate these people with the whole student movement.

Eventually, the student movement started to consider the idea that, in a true democracy, one should not need to ask permission — or “authorization,” or anything else of that nature. In July and August, public officials began to forbid demonstrations. Backed by a number of opposition legislators, the students sued to protect their constitutional right to protest. With or without authorization, they insisted on marching.

During the unauthorized secondary school students’ march on the morning of Aug. 4, the university students did not cancel their own march scheduled for the evening; instead, on Facebook, Vallejo stated “THE MARCH IS ON!!

No repressive measure launched by the government will succeed in undermining the strength of our movement.

We’ll respond with more unity and more struggle!”

As repression increased, an hour later she tweeted: “Today, 9 p.m., pot-banging in all of Chile in repudiation against repression.” This particular form of protest has a long history in Chile but has not been seen for two decades. All it took to revive it, though, was a single tweet. After that, it returned to popularity almost instantly, a symbolic occupation of the public space through noise, allowing thousands of people to evade government prohibitions against street protests by banging pans from their balconies, front doors and windows.

“We are not backing off despite all the threats,” Camila wrote soon after.

Her Twitter denunciations kept flowing as the day drew on. “Special Forces are trying to enter the FECH, they throw tear gas bombs to the interior. Students and staff are under siege, we cannot get out,” read one of

them. “The air is unbreathable. Stop the repression!” read the following one.

From then on, Chilean student organizations denounced police repression as a deliberate government policy, filing countless reports of excessive violence, illegal arrests, assaults, beatings, threats and abuses of authority.

Children of the 21st century and eager users of new technologies and social media, the urban youths knew right away the physical urban spaces were not the only ones worth fighting for: The Web was also a political space to be occupied. The social networks served as essential tools of organization, an invaluable means of communication, and an alternative source of information that countered the mainstream media’s view of protesters-as-criminals.

The Internet functioned as a protest location, a verbal battlefield, and — in the form of hacker actions against government websites — a combat weapon. It also provided the movement with unprecedented international visibility and support.

In the streets and online, a novel political discourse emerged between the democratic future and the dictatorial past, and it was based on a discovery of collective power, which was, as the students discovered, the perfect antidote for fear. In struggling to recover all things public — public education for all, truly public spaces, public discussion and a voice in public affairs — the students found out they were not afraid.

They were not afraid of repression, of change or of straining the system with their “excessive” demands. The conclusion was straightforward: “They fear us because we are not afraid.” Ñ K Ines M. Pousadela is an Argentine political scientist residing in Washington, D.C. Formerly a professor at the University of Buenos Aires and a visiting researcher at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland, Pousadela currently works as an independent researcher and political consultant.

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Riled up in Russia Voina Art Group isn't afraid to shock the world while protesting for their beliefs

text by Eamonn Sheehy / PhotoS by VOINA ART GROUP

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Voina activists drew a gigantic phallus on Liteiny drawbridge in St. Petersburg, across the river from the offices of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB. Voina activist Alex Plutser-Sarno explained that, conceptually, the member was "turned on" not only by the powerful security office, but also by the whole hierarchy of power in Russia.

— For the Russian authorities,Voina Art Group performances are like fingernails across a blackboard: piercing and damn annoying.Voina leaders claim their membership includes as many as 200 activists, all taking part in militant public performances that have garnered them at least 20 criminal investigations, some ongoing.

“Voina” — it translates to “war” — not only uses public spaces across Russia to its advantage, but at the same time utilizes social media to enter the consciousnesses of people across Russia and beyond. Their protest-driven actions have played out in various public spaces, ranging from McDonald’s restaurants to major city bridges to courtrooms to supermarkets.

Voina was founded in Moscow in 2005 by Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalia Sokol. Alexei Plutser-Sarno and Leonid Nikolayev joined in 2006 and 2009, respectively, and the four now create the concepts and coordinate the actions of the group.

Voina’s actions illustrate the potency of using public spaces and media to influence and engage a wider pool of people.

Their stunts have shocked and disgusted many but also gained them worldwide interest, culminating in the use of public spaces in Estonia, Italy, Germany and the United States to show support. The group has provided a provocative, sometimes shocking, arena for debate on topics that few others in Russia dare broach.

Voina’s official political orientation is anarchist. Its website names the group’s enemies and outlines the group’s structure: “Enemies: philistines, cops, the regime. #5 PUBLIC space Spring/summer 2013

“Organization type: militant gang, dominated by horizontal ties in everyday life and employing vertical relationships during actions. The group preaches renunciation of money and disregard toward the law.”

The group’s manifesto recalls Mayakovsky and Russian futurists of the early 1900s, who made similar use of public spaces, loudly singing out manifestos from street corners rejecting traditional art and societal norms. But Voina’s bitterness directed at Russian authorities takes the group to new levels of public extremes. They question corruption, authority and art.

Vorotnikov told a television news reporter, “I don't believe in peaceful protest because I don't believe peaceful protest is possible in Russia. If you just use legal methods, like the organizers of the big demonstrations propose, then you won't be able to stand up to the state.”

A Voina representative told Kosovo 2.0 that because of its outlaw status, contact with the group is possible only through one email address. “Any other addresses, as well as Skype (and) telephone, are not Voina contacts. If anyone offers them to you, these are obvious police provocations.”

Just as Voina activists have incorporated chaos into public performances, so too has disorder seeped into the group’s internal workings. Arguments have split the organization into factions, the most famous being the splinter group Pussy Riot.

Since Voina is now on national and international wanted lists, it is unknown if the world has seen the last of the group’s anarchic performances.

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Voina in action:

The concept of radical protest through street performance

Cock in the Ass / Punk Concert in the Courtroom - May 2009

During a federal hearing of prominent Russian curator Andrei Yerofeyev, on trial for “insulting human dignity” with an exhibition he organized,Voina burst into the courtroom as the punk band “Cock in the Ass.” The performers turned on stage equipment to full volume, jumped onto the benches and performed their song “All Cops are Bastards — You Ought to Remember That!” from the album “Fuck the Police, Those Motherfucking Bosses.”

Palace Revolution / 'Beg for mercy, cop!' - September 2010

Cop In a Priest's Cassock - July 2008

“On Judgement Day, cops have to kneel down and beg us, workers of fine arts, for forgiveness. God's punishment is coming. Repent your sins, two-faced dirty-dealin' cops!”

Demonstrators overturned a police car, nominally to retrieve a ball for a child. The protest of the Ministry of Home Affairs was titled “Help a child – help the country!”Vorotnikov, 35, and Nikolayev, 27, were arrested but later bailed out by United Kingdom street artist Bansky, who donated £80,000 so Voina could secure their release.

Oleg Vorotnikov wears a Russian Orthodox priest’s robe and a police officer’s hat. Dressed in this costume, he filled a cart with groceries, then left the store without paying. The action was supposed to protest the impunity with which the church and police operate.Voina released a statement that read, “There is no power of capital in Russia. Money strengthens the status of the illegally ruling corrupt clan. That's why we refuse to use money at all.”

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Cop humiliation in his own domain - May 2008

Decembrists Commemoration / Public Execution in the Supermarket - September 2008

A poster of then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hangs on bars in a Russian police station that Voina protesters invaded.They formed a human pyramid and then recited poetry:“Hello, policemen! You are not just two-faced dirty-dealing cops! We came here to humiliate you and teach you politeness! Voina congratulates you on the May holidays and on the inauguration day of Russia’s President Medvezhonok. It doesn't matter that Medvezhonok is young and inexperienced – you’re gonna teach him your simple tricks!”The pet name “Medvezhonok” is derived from the root of Mr. Medvedev's surname and means “puppy bear.”

On Moscow City Day in 2008,Voina activists invaded the lighting department of Moscow’s largest supermarket and staged a mock hanging of five people who represented groups that Voina says are targeted by national institutions: central Asian migrant workers, homosexuals and Jews.The mock-lynching was presented as a gift to corrupt Russian authorities, who incite homophobia, misanthropy and anti-Semitism, according to Voina activists.The killing of migrant workers has become an everyday reality in Russia, they say. Homophobic and racist comments made by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov incited the action, the activists said.

Mordovian Hour - May 2007

At a McDonald’s restaurant in Serpukhovskaya, Moscow, activists threw cats “to break up the drudgery of workers’ routine days,” they said. Activists chanted, “Death to fast food!” “Let’s strike at globalization with homeless cats!” and “No to global fascism!” Police interrupted the action and escorted activists to the police station — along with three cats collected as criminal evidence. Charges were later dropped. — K

#5 PUBLIC space Spring/summer 2013

Eamonn Sheehy is an Irish freelance writer focusing on human rights education and geopolitics in the Middle East, Balkans and the Caucasus/Russia. He works with various NGOs dealing with human rights and refugee issues. He also runs the “Migrate to the Fringe” writing project.

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