that's a wrap | happy new year

Another year nears its end, reminding us that there is much about it to reflect on and a lot more to get ready for in the next one. As many of us take this last week to do (just) so (or pretend to, anyway) -- to recover before we resume -- I leave you with these poems by Wislawa Szymborska, as a way to bridge the remainder of the 'holiday' -- this threshold of time lost and anticipation, the intermingling of memory and future in our search for substance and meaning. 

La Cenerentola, François Schuiten

Children Of Our Age

We are children of our age,

it's a political age.

All day long, all through the night,

all affairs--yours, ours, theirs--

are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not,

your genes have a political past,

your skin, a political cast,

your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates,

whatever you don't say speaks for itself.

So either way you're talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods,

you're taking political steps

on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political,

and above us shines a moon

no longer purely lunar.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

And though it troubles the digestion

it's a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning

you don't even have to be human.

Raw material will do,

or protein feed, or crude oil,

or a conference table whose shape

was quarreled over for months;

Should we arbitrate life and death

at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile, people perished,

animals died,

houses burned,

and the fields ran wild

just as in times immemorial

and less political.

***

Une Odeur d'étoile de Mer en Train de Mourir, Enki Bilal (The Hunting Party)

The End And The Beginning

After every war

someone has to clean up.

Things won’t

straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass.

Someone has to get mired

in scum and ashes,

sofa springs,

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder

to prop up a wall.

Someone has to glaze a window,

rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,

and takes years.

All the cameras have left

for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,

and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged

from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,

still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens

and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby

starting to mill about

who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes

sometimes someone still unearths

rusted-out arguments

and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew

what was going on here

must make way for

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown

causes and effects,

someone must be stretched out

blade of grass in his mouth

gazing at the clouds.

***

Albania celebrates | The Culture of Independence and the Unmaking (i.e. Redesigning) of Skanderbeg’s legacy

MVRV design proposals in Tirana, screenshots via

A state-run institution whose disposition is composed of half-truths, and whose sensibility and form is in the habit of wearing — thus bearing — only two masks: its own take on (tacky) kitsch, a mannerism not to be confused with vernacular, and its public ‘at work’ image that depicts the same short-sightedness of any social media ad campaign, hence an interfaciality laced with insecurities and conceit — which it then promotes as CULTURE — can be very telling, namely in revealing its agency as the inability to grasp and accept the shared reality it imposes its ‘legitimacy’ on, thus pretending to educate those living in it so to ‘cultivate’ it; when, in fact, it is this legitimacy that gets cultivated to become its main legacy — CULTURE.
The answer to the question What does CULTURE (have to) celebrate, then? is quite simple: self-preservation, namely its ability to suspend a shared reality in favor of a hegemonic one that hangs suspended over it as to cast the deepest shadow with the blindest of lights (i.e. half-truths), so to render people’s perception and consciousness obsolete, namely their bearings of and in any reality.

 

MVRV design proposals in Tirana, screenshots via

Cultural Hegemony deceives people into ceding their faculties, thus freedom, in favor of a universal reality hinged on this exact cognitive disorientation, which it then proceeds to stabilize — i.e. manipulate into acceptance — through erasure (of their shared past) and abstraction (of its continued imposition on them), thus normalizing specter as a totality where a potent panoptic gaze blinds lives into spectrality. Such a celebration then becomes nothing more than an omnipresent surveillance, better known as CULTURAL NORM.

The survival instinct from the loss of one reality persists as consumption of and over-indulgence in the other, with neither realities being fully grasped. Such a living, at the edge of two unknowns, might as well be resignified as a life in and of unknown unknowns — though the edge itself marks a duration that is persistently historical. Hegemony limits the chances and choices of an intelligible reality by reducing this duration — i.e. mental health — to a coping mechanism. So power becomes the only intelligence able to draw a(ny) distinction — devising the line, the edge, the limit, and even the history of the reality it forcefully offers. A reality that starts as discrimination is then cultivated into a stability, thus becoming the only way of life. As it appears and it is perceived as a ‘stable’ reality, it assumes autonomy, hence responsibility to secure its own duration — i.e. self-preservation and legacy.

via

As a powerful device (e.g. tool, weapon, mechanism) of enunciation, CULTURE regulated as such works to increase the hegemonic choices of articulation. Hence, the responsibility of CULTURE is indeed to celebrate this stability in order to guard (i.e. surveil) its legacy. In fact, such a celebration seems to be its only agency — i.e. its ethical capability and aesthetic capacity. So, in this year of Skanderbeg, 500 years after his death, it’s not at all shocking, probably even fitting, for the state-run institution of CULTURE to celebrate itself instead.

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Undigested Thoughts | In search of hollow-eve(n)

the metamorphosis of the city center from historic corridor to outdoor commercial mall 

the metamorphosis of the pedestrian from a public ‘escaping boredom’ to a consumer ‘embracing boredom’

boredom is different from loneliness

the metamorphosis of ‘boredom’ from play to affordance 

the metamorphosis of expression from playground to publicity 

the metamorphosis of freedom from discovering one’s own amidst the differences of the many to the many obeying the (often corrupt) privilege of the one

the metamorphosis of the city is the metamorphosis of its society 

the metamorphosis of the environmental landscape is the metamorphosis of mental nature 

the metamorphosis of man to cockroach is a reminder that cockroaches (will) outlive men — it is a return to, an end of, or becoming a being other than human, ancient even

metamorphosis is the human redesigning themselves to a coma, maybe death — to an uncertain afterlife, surely 

metamorphosis may (seems to) be the design of extinction to an original life form, hybridized 

this metamorphosis is an accelerated alienation 

an alienation from oneself?

an alienation toward oneself?

an alienation…

no one will be able to afford 

no one will be able to escape

a (rat) race…

no one will win because no one can see the freedom anticipated by the finish line

no one wants to win because fear catches up

freedom turns into fear

nowadays, public space does not mean freedom but fear

freedom of living turns into fear of dying 

freedom (by death — as the ultimate finish line) turns into fear (of life — living as the ultimate fear; fearing as the ultimate life form)

this metamorphosis seems fierce to oscillate between freedom and fear like that — between life and death

this metamorphosis could be the everyday life or the critique of the everyday life

it certainly is the habit [habitat, (in)habitation, (h)ability] of the everyday life 

metamorphosis makes every day possible 

metamorphosis makes life possible 

thus, metamorphosis is a materialization [in mind + matter] of time

The world finds itself on the brink or eve of yet another fundamental shift, and since it is October or harvest-time, the shapeshifter that is metamorphosis, this uncanny and cunning habit turns into a doubleheader (hint), a double-edged sword, a trick-or-treat, hollow and even. So it might be useless to caution the darkness of the hollow eve or the hollowness of its events.  

It’s definitely better to warn of the abyss of light instead. That’s why we have Hallowe’en — the metamorphosis of (a consumable) remembrance (now lightly consumed).

the hollow eve(n) between time lost and time found, not quite regained — is it fall or is it autumn — i forget

All this to say happy halloween! [As I’m sure I didn’t spook anyone.]

Hidden Cities & Walls of Language (excerpts)

No More Masterpieces - A.Artaud

This may begin to delineate a line of scrimmage between making architectural objects and writing architectonic texts. - J.Bloomer

The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language. - Wittgenstein

Does the visual image destroy the walls of language? The true significance of visual images must be rethought after thoroughly examining the thickness of the walls of language. - Abe Kobo

© PERfACTs "The ACTIVATION of the Traditional Games (Lojëra Popullore)"

** The text below is from William H. Gass's essay Invisible Cities, in his book Tests of Time, p. 37-68. The reading emphasis is mine. I have selected these excerpts (sometimes out of the original context) as a tool to make sense of Tirana now, to question the [in]visible gestures and mediated narratives found in the city. My main concern here is 'the scrimmage' between making and writing architecture (architectural forms / forms of our language) - and how we can 'activate' the line of demarcation between what is intrinsic and extrinsic to one and the other.

(Granted, W.H.Gass has written this book with Calvino's work in mind (and what it might teach us about the modern city), but some of the points he brings up cannot be ignored in today's neoliberal Albania. Thus, my interest in posting it. I recommend you read the original essay to draw your own conclusions.)

© PERfACTs "Theaters quietly unseat themselves and perform their plays outdoors." 

Think of the word polis – “city” – itself: a word which will be young still when every other city is a midden or in unsieved dust. It is the wretchedness of this truth, it is the injustice of any one word’s overweening reality which has made this truth so invisible.

Imprisoned by either walls or words, it is all the more important to try: to dream beyond the bricks; beyond the outer courtyard with its watchtowers, guards, guns; beyond the words which screen us from the world, beyond our own aims, fears, normally trivial aches and pains, which we nevertheless enlarge and objectify as bruises in hillsides, as knocks in walls, as cuts through mountains, as the leveling of plains.

Cities can be cleansed even of themselves when they do not understand the true nature of their inhabitants...

Scheherazade, staving off death with her stories, must borrow or invent...

[T]he camps of catastrophe, cities of sewers and open wounds... scalded by their atmosphere, whose admired autumnal sunsets are caused by clouds of foetid gas; cities where growths of garbage define the parks, and every alley is intestinal; the cities we can only forget, it seems, by repeating them, by reproducing… reinvesting, rebuilding, reinhabiting… by reenacting their several and similar hells, not smoothly and professionally, but stupidly and clumsily...

We have fables Aesop might have managed, not by imagining animals but by imagining cities.

From our journeys, we may return with other wares, but that won’t matter, for what will render them significant will be their placement on the pavement, the flights of influence they suggest, the orders they elicit from the eye … returning, not with these images alone, but with the wonder of their relationships. 

The chessboard is also the grid of every great city. It is only incidentally a set of paths, for these paths are principally corridors of power, influence, force.

What we frequently fail to understand is that the city is not an assemblage of buildings streaked by highways and streets; it is a subtle pattern of powers, like the board.

At times he thought he was on the verge of discovering a coherent, harmonious system underlying the infinite deformities and discords, but no model could stand up to the comparison with the game of chess.

[B]eneath the pieces the board is bare, the stones of all his cities’ buildings dissolve in the lines which bound them, and these run pointlessly – invisibly – off into space… On that slick ivory surface, on the fired clay, in that open square of wood which is at once a piece of playing field and a square of the city, what can one further see? the footprint of a pavement? perhaps a taut and angry fiber? the glaze of a dreaming eye? logs lazily adrift in a slow-moving river? a woman peering from an upstairs window? Every object is itself a cell which would contain us, yet every end has its outlet as well; and as we pass through a cave’s yawn to the hollow of a hollow tree, from that hollow to an open door or window, we cross one threshold to achieve yet another, even more wondrous, wider world.

When the concept of the city, with its concrete streets and concrete towers, has been replaced by that of the game, with its architectural grid and gun range, its system of implicit threats, its irregular spheres of influence; and when that game, furthermore, has been, in its interest, exhausted; then the materials of the contest, its dinky tools, the ivory itself, its fingered skin, the shape of the cross on the king’s crown, are entreated for results. A pillar becomes a tree, a tree a totem.

Let me recapitulate our progress. It is a pattern to be found in all the arts. We begin our pursuit of the city by examining the particular, the things that cities are made of – squares, streets, buildings, bridges, people, parks – allowing the least leaf to be engraved upon our faces as though it has been long pressed there. We endeavor to give to the shallowest saucer great depth, but we do so through the intensity of our attention, by dwelling on the small bob of its basin, the thin rule of gold around its rim, the cup which will squat there when the tea is finally ready. We collect facts. We describe things as we believe they really are. Not only our streets, but our lanes, our halls and closets, are named in this realm of reference, this freeway of denotation. The procedure will give us one sort of city: a city of idle odors and random sounds, a city of character, of what is popularly called “place.” Our city will have a personality, for we shall have rendered the gestures of its spirit, the way in which it resembles a young girl, a lecherous uncle, an old maid. Our city will be a richly human body made of countless bones. Many a corner will strike us like an elbow. Many a path will wear like a hole through our shoe. Many a brick will stiffen at our touch. The light will fall irregularly throughout the city, palely in this place, brightly in another, after the manner of our understanding.

Not content with this, we soon seek – in the playing fountain, the shaded courtyard, the kneeling man, the fan, in the look that leaps like a tree through the stone pavement – a pattern of powers, of influence and agitation; and like the Great Khan we withdraw toward the game, although it is still people we see moving about like pawns, and not yet pawns we see moving about like people. This method will give us still another sort of city, a city in which system is beginning to be born, in which terms are beginning to be replaced by relations, in which roles are beginning to define their representatives, and not the reverse.

The signifier has swallowed the signified, although you may still observe it as a swell in the stomach, like a bulge beneath the bedclothes of a bereaved and sleeping body.

What has really happened to us?

We have begun to listen to the sound of our own words, not merely to their meanings; we have begun to circle their shapes like a walk around a town; we have turned to the representatives of thought for sustenance, not to the thoughts themselves, or to the things those thoughts were presumably about; for just as trees are bark and leaves and light, and the forest is trees and leaflight too, so the city is made of millions of small forms and fine textures, of the very near and the quite far, and like the wilderness may have its own mountains, depending on place and point of views, tiredness and timing.

A city is a wall for words, misunderstood or simply imitated in spray paint; but it is a house for houses too, and so should have its doors and sudden windows, its stairs and stories, its halls and dining rooms and dens. We have explored our chosen city through dreams of its streets and derelict alleys, its suspension bridges and bridle paths. Now we remain with the mute sign itself. The map of the city is the city.

Shortly new words will begin to be heard in the sounds which old words make, as for instance in “swoon,” which I understand, now that I speak it clearly and listen with a pure ear, is not the languid faint I formerly feared, but the casual and quiet glide path of a paper airplane.

Not only are there cities which belong to the past, and are now invisible for that reason; but there are cities of the present whose existence is quite evident to any traveler with eyes alert and curious, but which are hidden to the inhabitants, who no longer need to experience their postboxes, their scented trees, in order to allow their dogs to piss against them on their twice-daily walks. A neighborhood may be missed entirely by a preoccupied visitor. I certainly do not notice now the soles of my feet, my weight, my restless or resentful ears, opposing opinions. … Great stretches of so many cities are indistinguishable, and even when we peer at them, they are simply stretches, highways which have thrown out little asphalt lots along them like oozes of rust on a pipe. Amid so much tastelessness, it takes a pretty tasteless gesture to create a locale.

But when are cities invisible because they have no identity, and when is it because of our indifference, our bemused eye?

Our cities are like seas, and it is not uncommon to see one building seize and swallow another like a shark.

All future cities are invisible as a matter of course.

To illuminate the landing of a stairway, panels of stained glass foresee the development of the city. Which are the true forms and which the false? We can ask this question even when we believe we know which is the solid city and which the reflection.

I live, myself, in a city of defeated expectations, a city of inept lies.

When will shopping centers become warehouses if warehouses are already galleries, ateliers, or rifle museums? Theaters quietly unseat themselves and perform their plays outdoors.

But the falsehoods began when the first earth was moved.

Not every building remarries readily.

There are timeless cities, not because they seem eternal, but because everything about them is the same age, like the nose, ears, chin of a face.

[Invisible Cities is a book about still another book, Dante’s Inferno, composed as nearby to The Travels of Marco Polo. The nine sections of Calvino’s text resemble the nine circles of Hell through which Virgil escorts Dante, although Marco Polo carries the khan with him largely by turns of the wheel of the word. There is a definite, not to say plummetous, descent from the first part, which opens with “Cities and Memory,” to the final one, which begins with “Cities of the Dead,” after which we fall more precipitously toward those cities which are said to be “hidden.” In Calvino though, we meet cities on our journey, not Dante’s miserable men.] 

Below that point we found a painted people,
who moved about with lagging steps, in circles,
weeping, with features tired and defeated.
And they were dressed in cloaks with cowls so low
they fell before their eyes, of that same cut
that’s used to make the clothes for Cluny’s monks.
Outside, these cloaks were gilded and they dazzled;
but inside they were all of lead, so heavy
that Frederick’s capes were straw compared to them.
A tiring mantle for eternity!
[Inferno, canto XXIII, 11, 58-67]

The technique of this magical and fabulous fiction concerns the recognition of the Real, which is its insistent subject. … Reality does not consist of things, their collections, or their shallow denominations. Reality is not a set of simple situations, nor is it one shade of anything. It is not even a single system of relations – invisible as they all are. The experience of the city exceeds our experience of Proust. A great city’s life lies in the details, in the details as they fulfill a whole. Consider what a little grass does to a set of steps, and then multiply… multiply…. Consider what a crack of light does to the dungeon, and multiply for freedom and for sky. Consider the multiplication not only of niceties but of vulgarities as well: signs, poles, wires, trash, broken glass, peeling paint, rotting boards. And multiply… multiply….

Isn’t that what happens to the elements of a successful city: they satisfy our needs, allow our lusts, remind us of our past, inhabit our future, encourage our reveries? What is a text but a community of words?

We have seen cities clothed in colored tiles, courtyards composed of images and ancient scripts and antique statuary, streets lined with streams, lined with inclining tables and dissipated awnings… A single building can sometimes overpower an entire city and, become more than an emblem, more than a feat to be admired: a conscience to be obeyed. [The cities] the text takes us through, including those that disappeared ahead of history and before we reached the title page; governmental cities too, capitals with a capital C, and those which will be paraded by our absent or our sleeping eye as the text turns silently inside itself, thinking like a drill bit does, bringing more aspects to inner view … continuously, invisibly.

“The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born.” Yet cities come to an end when they lose their boundaries, when neighborhoods, districts, regions flow together with the sameness of a flooding river, masses of indistinctly different men covering the country.

[Lastly] the unjust city, a meat grinder… Here, hidden, the just recognize one another by their manner of speech … Here, however, within the very virtues of the just and their secret city, lies the sense of their superiority like the celebrated canker in the rose. To realize that your righteousness deprives you of the pleasure and privileges the unjust enjoy drives you to despise justice and resent your own virtue. By means of this grim dialectic another unjust city, hidden beneath the hidden, begins to grow, a cancer called “just cause.”

In the unjust city – our cultureless world – the just – the cultured – recognize one another as citizens of the same secret city, but their very isolation and the protections of superiority they must adopt to survive encourage a bitter hubris, which costs them the esteem they have fancied was their fitting reward.

Notice how the same lesson lay unlearned in this city...

***************************************************

myth (un)making | An excerpt on (mis)appropriation of Skanderbeg

Today, I would like to share an excerpt from Ardian Klosi's book Te Kundërcjapi, as a way of reflecting on the events that are being held in honor of Skanderbeg both in Albania and abroad - more specifically to engage those discussions that are celebrating the 500th anniversary of his death - and furthermore, to probe a "disquieting depth", a provocation on the significance and burden of transcendence; from a life lived as a man and fighter, to a (fictitious, but not meaningless) revival as symbol, myth, our national hero. Granted, this post is not meant to unpack all of these hopes - only to scratch an itch, as it were, about the misuse, misinterpretations, and misappropriations that are and have been thrown around for quite some time in regards to the language used (first and foremost), historical facts and cultural heritage, 'revolutionary' criticality (read: (in)action), and so on.

I am making my way through this book a lot slower than I anticipated, but I did choose this specific piece for two reasons: 1) to give you a glimpse of what inspired yesterday's post (and the undigested thoughts behind it); and 2) to put the resistance fighter in a different context - that of the author - that of the dissident. I know this might be quite a reach on my part (or maybe not) because (way too often) Skanderbeg has been appropriated in mythical terms (at least from what I've read), and not as a figure of dissent (such as Klosi), one that critically unravels (in) the shadows of mainstream history. This is a juxtaposition that I'd like to look at further (and am just now beginning to research), or at least be able to start a conversation with those that know more than I do about seeing Skanderbeg in this light, and moreover to acquire a comprehensive knowledge (archive/mapping) of Albanian dissidents. Those of you that would like to share, please do reach out!

The Verso Book of Dissent: Revolutionary Words from Three Millennia of Rebellion and Resistance, an anthology of dissenting voices.

Lastly, I should add that any inquiry into what we might consider role models (in my case the 'anti-spectacle' or the critical specter of the dissident) can be approached simply, with the question of how do we do justice to such people who have struggled against those in power - the dissidents who raised their voices in protest and dedicated their lives (through fighting or writing) to dismantle the normative oppressions that have haunted and persecuted us for so long; still.

**Excerpt in Albanian

Po na e marrin, Te Kundërcjapi, Ardian Klosi

     Po na e marrin Kastriotin. Janë ngritur ca njerëz të ligj, xhelozë, regresivë, antishqiptarë dhe po na e marrin. Po ku do ta shpien? Nuk dihet, a do t'ia çojnë fqinjëve veriorë, jugorë, a kishës katolike, a asaj ortodokse, s'është e sigurt, e sigurt është vetëm që nuk duan të na e lënë. Thonë edhe sikur do t'ua lënë në dorë disa historianëve si Hopf, Hahn, Shuflai, Pall, Babinger, Marinescu, Valentini, Schmitt, njerëz që vetëm arkivat njohin dhe fyejnë ndjenjat e një populli të vogël. Uh uh uh.
     Po na e marrin Skënderbeun. Për herë të dytë, pasi e morën osmanët një herë, ia shqyen varrë, i shpërndanë eshtrat mes tyre dhe s'i lanë gjurmë në këtë vend, tani kanë dalë ca mendjembrapshtë që do t'ia heqin Gjergjjit kurorën nga koka e skeptrin nga dora dhe do të na e lënë historinë e mesjetës pa mbret. Oi oi!
     Duan të thonë se s'ngriti flamurin e kombit në Krujë e në Lezhë, po flamurin e Bizantit dhe të kryqit. Po shpifin se qenkësh nga familje ortodokse, sikur gjoja i ati paska blatuar në mal të Atosit Kullën e Arbrit, sikur i vëllai Reposhi qenkësh dorëzuar kallogjer, po thonë se paska patur nënë sllave, se kishte kunetër, baxhanakë e nuse jo vetëm prej gjaku të pastër shqiptar, por edhe serbë, malazezë, bizantinë. Upupu që një mortje i ngrëntë, e haram u qoftë qumështi shqiptar i nënës! E pasi ia hoqën kurorën, i hoqën dhe Mbretërinë e Shqipërisë, që shtrihej, siç e kemi në librat e shkollave 50 vjet e këtej, nga Përmeti në Vermosh, nga Peja në Karavasta, po duan ta ngushtojnë në Dibër, Mat e Krujë; i hoqën qeverinë, i hoqën ministritë, Kuvendin dhe shërbiment e fshehta, i hoqën Ushtrinë Çlirimtare të Arbërisë dhe e lanë me një kalori të lehtë prej 3000 a 4000 burrash. Nc nc nc! E pasi nuk e lanë sulltan Muratin të vdiste nga marazi poshtë mureve të Krujës, po shumë më vonë në një tavernë të Azisë së vogël, e vunë Kastriotin t'i jepte Alfonsit V të Napolit betimin e vasalit dhe çelësat e Krujës po atë vit, më 1451. Po e bëjnë Skënderbeun me zotër feudalë, me aleatë e mbështetës, po duan të thonë sikur ka marrë rregullisht rroga nga Venediku, ushtarë nga Napoli, dukate me mijëra nga papët, kur ai ishte i vetëm, për 25 vjet mbi kështjellën e tij arbërore, që u ngrit në anë të Adriatikut dhe u bëri ballë gjithë stuhive, nga Lindja dhe nga Perëndimi, njësoj si ajo kështjella tjetër, 500 vjet më vonë...
     Dhe thonë se nuk e paska penguar vërshimin osman mbi Europë, sikur gjoja në të njëjtën kohë Mehmeti II Pushtues paska marrë Konstantinopojën, Bosnjen, Serbinë, Vllahinë, Peloponezin e gjithë Greqinë. Turp, turp, turp!
     Po rrëzojne Historinë e Nolit, që shkriu një jetë për Gjerqin e tij, edhe pse nuk e pa mirë derëziu që po mbështetej mbi një histori kallpe, mbi të ashtuquajturin Antivarinin; e sado i thoshin dijetarë të tjerë se është një prift mashtrues i shekullit 18 e mos i beso, imzoti ynë zemërbardhë s'lëkundej nga e tija, se donte ta mësonin vogëlushët historine siç e donte e mira e kombit e jo siç thoshin dokumentet e armiqve.
     Ububu, ububu! E vunë të zihej me fisnikët e tjerë shqiptarë, njërit t'i merrte tokat, tjetrit kështjellat, të tretin ta ndante nga gruaja, të tjerë t'i hidhte në birucat e Napolit, e lanë të grihej gjithë jetën me Dukagjinët, kur ne e dinim se të gjithë i qenë nënshtruar dhe e njihnin për mbret. Popopo! Po sa shumë tradhtarë, po sa shumë besëqena ngrinin armët kundër tij! Na dilka se e luftonin vazhdimisht shqiptarë, jo po Jakub Muzaka, jo po Izir beu, jo po Ferid beu, jo po Ballaban pasha. Si, ngriheshin komandantë shqiptarë dhe u binin zotërve shqiptarë?!! Luftonin shqiptarë me shqiptarë? Një palë për kryqin e të tjerët për gjysmëhënën?! Si ishin ndarë të gjithë më gjysmë, Muzakat, Balshajt, Aranitët, Dukagjinët, njëra palë me emrat Tanush, Gjergj e Pal, tjetra Jakup, Mehmet e Feriz, ca zinin be për gjakun e Krishtit e ca për mjekrën e Muhametit? Po ne e dinim se populli shqiptar u bashkua si një grusht i vetëm rreth mbretit të tij dhe i bëri ballë rrebeshit pushtues osman për 25 vjet! Si thatë, ishin pushtuar me kohë dhe pastaj bënë kryengritje? Domethënë osmanët e kishin marrë Arbërinë 50 vjet më parë, i kishin ndarë qytetet e kështjellat më të mëdha me Venedikun? Ofshofshofsh.
     I patë si qenë mbledhur ditën e shtunë? Kuvend i baballarëve të kombit! Një masë e murrëtyer, e zymtë, me kostume gri, që ngrinte zërin dhe dënonte. Dënonte armiqtë e shqiptarizmës që me çelësa e dara të zeza kanë zënë të dekonstruktojnë mitologjinë nacionale. Rezil dy herë, rezil tri herë! Ptu, ptu, ptu! Si Plenum ngjante, si mbledhje e Lidhjes së Shkrimtarëve, atëherë kur dënonte devijatorët me orientimet e sapodala të Udhëheqësit. Të gjithë njëzëri.
     Të gjithë ata që e drejtojnë këtë vend tash sa vjet në pikë të hallit u bashkuan të shtunë në një Përlutësore për Kastriotin, kundër armiqve të rinj. Ata që po ia falin fqinjëve Shqipërinë llokma-llokma, me bregdet, me ishuj e me gadishuj. Që po i përdorin trevat e Kastriotit për fabrika çimentosh. Që e kanë bërë Arbërinë kryqëzim trafiqesh droge, skrapi e rruspiesh. Që nënshkruajnë ligje të turpshme për (s)pastrim figurash. Që s'po i lënë vendit një pikë dinjiteti. Të gjithë në hall të madh për Skënderbeun. Po i lëkundin statujat, faqezinjtë, po na e lënë popullin pa Baba!
     Mbylluani gojën këtyre hairsëzëve, sekuestrojuani librat këtyre armiqve. Se po vazhduan kështu na e morën vërtet Skënderbeun, ia morën Akademisë së Shkencave, Lidhjes së Shkrimtarëve dhe Artistëve, Kështjellës shkëmbore buzë Adriatikut. Ia morën dhe e lanë... pa pendët e nacionalizmit... pa izolimin qindvjeçar kombëtar.
     E lanë Skënderbeun me shkëlqimin që e kishte vetë, dikur.

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Undigested Thoughts | In search of missing spectre(s)

500 years after his death, 2018 is being celebrated as The Year of Skanderbeg (and of Albanian national identity) - so I decided to make a quick thing (below) in hopes of more reflection and less celebration. 

© www.perfact.org

Undigested Thoughts | In search of 'Memoirs Found in a Bathtub'

As the election campaigns make their final bang before whatever whimper they'll feel on Sunday when Albanians go to vote, I'd like to offer you a couple of the many ways I might convey what I think of this rat race and its self-inflicted climatic messages, in what has quite honestly been an overwhelmingly anticlimactic turn of events, online and in real life. New timelines on old promises, past futures aged and preached anew. Same old, some would say, still not being able to distinguish whether these things happen to us or for us.

I don't want to dismiss this dullness (of the 'same old', which takes its cue from the status-quo of the everyday life), far from it, I'd like to isolate and define it as a real and steady instrument of power that materializes as a soft violence on citizenship, one that refrains the citizen's freedom of choice (which is obvious if we just glance at and listen to the choices). Voting, no matter how it has been treated in times past, continues to stand as both, the citizen's voice and weapon of combat, their freedom and responsibility. The question that remains then, is how are these citizens able to proceed when those who speak for them, those who represent them - all of the political parties - practice such soft violence?

So, in light of this still undigested question, the first way of conveying my thoughts about the election is through the blunt dialog of untamed tongues:

 

And secondly, through another dialog of a more indirect approach (or sermon of sorts), via an excerpt from Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub:

" "And here you thought you were a prisoner in a labyrinth of evil, where everything was pregnant with meaning, where even the theft of one's instructions was a ritual, that the Building destroyed only in order to build, to build only in order to destroy the more -- and you took this for the wisdom of evil... Hence your mental somersaults and contortions. You writhed on the hook of your own question mark to solve that equation of horror. But I tell you there is no solution, no equation, no destruction, no instructions, no evil -- there is only the Building -- only -- the Building --""Only the Building?" I echoed, my hair on end."Only the Building," he echoed my echo, shivering."This is not wisdom, this is a blind and all-encompassing perfection, a perfection not of man's making but which arose from man, or rather from the community of man. Human evil, you see, is so petty and frail, while here we have something grand and mighty at work... An ocean of blood and sweat and urine! One thundering death rattle from a million throats! A great monument of feces, the product of countless generations! Here you can drown in people, choke on them, waste away in a vast wilderness of people! Behold: they will stir their coffee as they calmly tear you to shreds, chat and pick their noses as they outrage your corpse, and brew more coffee as it stiffens, and you will be a hairless, worn-out and abandoned doll, a broken rattle, an old rag yellow and forgotten in the corner... That is how perfection operates, not wisdom! Wisdom is you, yourself -- or maybe two people! You and someone else, that intimate flash of honesty from eye to eye..."I watched his deathly pale face and wondered where I'd heard all this before, it sounded familiar. Then I remembered -- that sermon, the sermon about choking, evil and the Devil, the sermon which Brother Persuasion told me was intended as provocation..."How can I believe you?" I groaned. He shuddered."O sinner!!" he screamed in a whisper. "Dost thou still double that what may be a harmless conversation or joke on one level doth constitute, on another, legal action and, on yet another, a battle of wits between Departments? Verily, if thou followest this line of thought, thou shalt end up nowhere, since here anything, hence everything, leadeth everywhere!"..."What are you saying?""You still don't understand? I'm an agent provocateur because I'm a priest. Only as your agent provocateur am I, a priest, allowed to say what I've said here. Of course, we expect you to cooperate..." (170-172) "

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A year worth(y/less) of posts | In search of missing truths in 2016

Another year bites the dust.

Looking back, we can agree that such a year probably started to dissolve at conception (or concession in Albania). A kind of built-up presence, accumulated since the beginning of millennia, which has finally accelerated enough to materialize, becoming unmistakably visible, just enough to crash. An accident of time, maybe? It is time to re-read Virilio's "Information Bomb" and "Politics of the Very Worst" more closely this year-end:

“There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We'll dream of being blind.” [IB]

“The accident is an inverted miracle, a secular miracle, a revelation. When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as [...] progress.” [PVW]

2016 was one for the books and drawing boards -- the perfect storm of invention(s). That is, invention of information, as impact [read: accident(s)]; redrawing lines of narrative and image, pushing for form instead of formation, causing a deep withdrawal into (or advance (out) of) oneself.

As a result, this blog was sporadic in translating (as) this trans-form-ation, and making legible the turmoil of its formation, thus fewer posts were written here and (unfortunately) faster 'truths' got made in social media. It got caught up in one too many reactionary sentiments, making itself more sensible to unproductive energy and vulnerable disposition. In an attempt to fathom the absurd logic and the information craftiness of whatever invention, It got distracted (and mildly co/stu-nned) by the face value of its impact; misreading (hence, mistaking) promise for premise and imaginary for imagined. Although, I feel that the thought-image construed and provided as (a cultural) truth was doing both (and all) simultaneously. It has been quite a 50 week (and counting) ride of inventing the anticipation of uncertain, yet already existing accident.

It is just the beginning though, and one doesn't know how to gear up for what seems like a long f(l)ight ahead. Should we feel sick to our stomach, be(come) somber, read Hannah Arendt, or just be and let the hype direct the flow of (one's) thought, energy, and the myth of democracy? If this year was one of attacks on public space just to see its publics hurt (through suicide bombers or privatization); of wars made just as banal and real as the everyday; of post-truths, alt-right, selfies, and nihilism; then, 2017 can be anticipated as one of mass(ive) PTSD (post-traumatic-stress-disorder), of post-revolutions and freedom-fluidity, of alt-delete and alt-control (with no alt-option), of the displaced self (made possible by the displayed self or the selfie) as a representation of the real distanced by reality. A year of paradoxes where cultural progress (as a human construct) will mean both, the normalization of, and invention as/of the accident. ("We'll dream of being blind.")

A new sort of cultural nihilism has emerged in the accident of the post-, and the post-accident of the progress (invention/accident) paradox, where the human makes way for its inhuman self, in a kind of post-colonization (a de-colonization and re-colonization cycle of) survival. 2016 has provided much evidence of (unreal) human fictions and (real) inhuman influences, be that by advancing AI-s, or human cruelty and imagination. We've witnessed way-too-real historical re-enactments of violence enter as newness, in what now marks the era of post(s) human-centrism, the acceleration/deceleration paradox of human artifice. The camouflage(d) has been abstracted; political health, stealth and wealth have become spectator sports, whose public service operate on the inhuman scale of market value; whose public scrutiny has not been (human-)scaled to citizen prosperity and safety of place. 

The future will be an anomaly: a normalization of alienation.

an experimental film by Jonas Mekas

Where does this leave/take us? This is the one question on everyone's mind, beyond what I might as well call hope (Einstein's definition of insanity - doing the same thing and expecting different results), and the perversity (branded as innovation/invention) of New World [B]order(s). Well, be it a blessing (some sure do see it as such, sigh) or a curse, one thing is certain; 2016 showed us the paradox of being human, that we're on the verge of fulfilling a very old proverb, albeit its warnings:

1. May you live in interesting times. 

2. May you be recognized by people in high places. 

3. May you get what you wish for.

We are, then, left to figure out the last one:

4. May you find the final blessing/curse.

With this in mind, I feel the new year ought to be one of forensics, in deciphering facts, truths and what's real - just so we're clear on where the line stands and which side of the paradox we're on (if any). This line of f(l)ight is a spatial (and cultural) force associated with violence (most often than not), but it can also be a tool/place for critical thinking. In disseminating and diagnosing the dimensions of the paradox, we open it up as a line of communication, that determines the progress of and in (its) formation, and not as a (form of) commodity of invention.

We should (learn to) be better critics, diligently and sensibly so. 

Lastly, I leave you with Jan Švankmajer's Dimensions of Dialogue and the possibilities of interacting forms.

Jan Švankmajer: Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) from ΜΙΤSARAS //grafos on Vimeo.

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Postcards from Tirana | In Search of Missing Messages

Decoding the city through postcards.

I made a few simple postcards with borrowed imagery and text, which I now call Assembly/ies of the Entr-acte \\ The Albanian Public(s). Let me know what you think. ☺

An empty PUBLIC amusement makes a great PARK hide out

 

Frontier of Enlightened PUBLIC in Extinction

 

 Six Corpses in Search of a PUBLIC:

- Garden of Excess PARKED in the Abyss of Delight

The Six Corpses are the buildings that edge the main square. The history and character of which has shaped and filled the void of this space for over a century.

 1. National Historical Museum as the corpse of The Persistence of Memory •

2. "15 kateshi" / 1st Skyscraper (vertical typology) as the corpse of The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory •

3. Et'hem Bey Mosque / Clock Tower as the corpses of Old Age
4. Palace of Culture (Pallati i Kultures) as the corpse of Adolescence
5. City Hall (Bashkia) as the corpse of Infancy

6. Skanderbeg Monument as the corpse of The Artist's Despair Before the Grandeur of Ruins;
and its Park as the corpse of Public Skirmishes

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False Prophets| In search of missing pieces

Reading Aaron Betsky's Violated Perfection: Architecture and the Fragmentation of the Modern, especially The Project of the Modern essay, I find many similarities to the Project of Rilindje in Albania. There are many fundamental differences of course, but it seems like their architectural model of control - concealed in the image and ‘perpetuated in physical form’ is shaped along same lines of reconstruction and reform. But, what is the order of the Albanian project, I wonder. The methodology of its operations, its logic of abstraction through reduction, the incomprehensible (some might say promiscuous) measure of judgment, the false public scale, its imprisonment (through manipulation) of values, meanings, consequences, and humanism. What is the point to all this?

I am trying to understand such project - its form, the promise of its trans-formation as a mere re-form, not even a formation. If Rilindje means re-birth, then I question not its new life, but its departure from the previous one. Its displacement. Its difference. The rejection of its form-er self. What does its resurrection means to its (new and old, continuous and fragmented) existence? What does it mean to (for) us?

What has architecture done these past three years that it didn't do in the previous twenty, and vice-versa?

This is my question. I understand that starting anew, in terms of transformation not rebirth, one goes through a puberty of sorts, questioning one's existence, lack of faith, drowning in self-loathing and pity, but at the same time there is a surge of fearlessness, stupidity yes, but learning as well, especially if one has been sheltered for so long. There's a bolder way of being, seeing the world and a curious courage of acting upon it, of living. A way of life that is quickly outed, denounced when there is a self-proclamation of being re-born. As if this rebirth or another chance of living comes automatically with a maturity entitlement. As if being considered mature (at this point only in image) validates actions, abstractions, distractions and redactions; as if it makes for a better and worthy life.

Alas, I digress. But the question remains: what has this (self-entitled) new era of architecture done that the previous one, or the one before that have accomplished or not?- other than a negation of prior self(s) of course, and nihilism of context (the contextual everyday life), cowardly branded as 'rebirth' - a market-loving, tax-evading, bureaucratic boilerplate. It is not a movement, a call to action, not even a haphazard ideology - it is a brand, not an identity.

What then becomes the critical investigation of such Project?

The architecture(s) of Albania is not an Exquisite Corpse but a Corpse of Excess. Think about it. It continuously imposes death on itself (in order to be reborn), it hoards or accumulates so much excess to cover and extend its missing body / identity, and ultimately it has been dehumanized thus it wants to dehumanize its public of people and environment alike. Maybe to start unpacking the architecture of Rilindje and its rebirth(ed) castration, we need to first read Reza Negarestani's The Corpse Bride, The Labor of the Inhuman, Frontiers of Manipulation, and some of his other texts on chimerization.

Then, and I really hope to do so in the future (if I'm able to of course), the critical investigation of Rilindje, becomes not one of rebirth but of the living dead.

This is an unexplored abyss for now, and it will remain as such for a while longer I suspect, or at least until we've learned to ask the right questions or think about the futurity we can expect, at least hope from its current existence and maturity. And, in case such obscure thoughts (of the living dead) persist and we're caught reading Brassier's Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction or other such confusing texts, then we might feel ready to dive in to the abyss. For now though, let's make sense of the Architectural Project of Rilindje through the clear words of Aaron Betsky and the Modern Project.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives - Second Life Replay

** These are only a few excerpts from his aforementioned book - what actually started my spiral undigested thoughts and provocations that it might be time to look at Rilindje not as a rebirth but as a forced death, as sparked by the text below when questioning the relevance of architecture as a profession. Also, what I mean to include in the Project is the strange dichotomy of the Albanian architecture: historical preservation and new construction, - both with devastating consequences of enlightenment and extinction (to borrow from Brassier). Both, with an unbearable nihilistic sensibility of being. As always, this is my reading of the Project and the text below has been taken out of its original context. To draw your own conclusions, I encourage you to read the book.

In economic terms, as Manfredo Tafuri has pointed out, architecture is losing its relevance as a profession. From client's perspective, the sole aim of architecture is to further the efficiency of industrial processes and their derivatives. For this architecture is no longer necessary; space planning, engineering and codification will do. Subsequently the whole profession is run by these considerations. The traditional role of architecture as an integrated and condensed representation of society, or a single human being, has similarly been taken over by mass media. 

What we are increasingly left with is an anti-monumental architecture, an architecture that diffuses into space planning, flexible arrangements (which can this not be easily composed), and facades that reflect this central instability. 

It is architects who "push" architecture's disappearance into mass production and engineering that manage to recreate an architecture out of the representation of its own absence. The unrealizable architecture of utopia is the last refuge of the representational and significant composition of physical resources. 

Architecture realizes itself in its own death. 

Over the last twenty-five years, numerous solutions to this problem have been proposed, countered by Tafuri's dictum that “No 'salvation' is any longer to be found within [modern architecture]: neither wandering restlessly in labyrinths of images so multivalent they end in muteness, nor enclosed in the stubborn silence of geometry content with its own perfection.” Neither the image-laden pastiches of the post-modernists, nor the self-consciously monumental reductions of the modernists can avoid the fact that their devices produce unnecessary artifacts and meaningless pieces of escapism, with one important exception: they sell the buildings. 

Its stylistic manipulations resurrect another world, removed in time and place from that of our modernized one. It creates a theatrical scene in which we can play roles more attractive than those to which we have been assigned. Architecture, in other words, sells our world to us. Architecture is an extension of advertising, but then every aspect of culture as industry has, in the end, no other function except to sell, whether specific products or their generalized context, "a way of life," a "lifestyle." 

We then find ourselves in cities where moments of order or reference are pasted onto otherwise non-significant interiors. Each of these gestures is of necessity incomplete. None of them really tells you about the building inside, or about the context: they do not condense and make visible what they are, how they are made, or what our relationship might be to them. 

At this point architecture is in retreat. Despite nostalgic attempts to reintroduce a former era in which human activity, the imposition of outside order, and built forms had a three-way relationship, we do not have an architecture in our urban environments (nor, increasingly outside of the urban/suburban configuration, either). Nostalgic objects or urban experiences only reinforce the sense of architecture as a mask, a piece of physical advertising to be used to sell a particular set of services such as food or souvenirs.

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Pokemon Go, as an Approach to Tourism and Politics in Albania | In search of missing pieces

Granted I don't play, but the more I read and learn about PokemonGo the more I find it curiously similar to many state-centric campaigns in Albania, especially when it comes to tourism and politics - how these campaigns are run, consequently won and ultimately deemed successful. Actually, the same can be said of any other major decision-making (reforms and rulings) event that has to do with a public audience/participant, place, and resources. 

It is curious indeed that they all propose an 'alternat(e/ive)' reality while leaving the existing one in a much worse condition that they found it. To most skeptics, this is a temporary perverse fantasy, but we've come to find out it isn't going anywhere. To the players and enthusiasts, it is a game of obsession, an addiction that has willingly made them both victim and perpetrator. To the enablers on the other hand, it is a global toolbox, a mass-marketing automation that marks progress, even though not necessarily equality or justice. In short, a brave new world, an augmented reality that promises to infuse the actual with the virtual, the real and the unreal, in a life and mind-blowing existence of continuous interaction. A holistic presence that vows to enhance the quality of life as we know it. A campaign built on trust or better yet stolen trust - whatever is promised in the ether, will be materialized in the physical realm. A public augmented to publicity. Hear, hear, for a better, fuller and happier life - lived.

Unfortunately, as we continue to bear witness to what is happening every single day, we have become quicker to react to (and forget) moments that shock - a chaotic recurrence of senseless acts, speeches and allegiances that buildup and blowup tirelessly on both social media feeds and our urban streets. What are the human ramifications of such augmentation then? They're not only seen anymore, they're felt. The world has become simultaneously better connected while its privacy better invaded. We are fuller of dis, mis, in and form-ation. Fuller of expression and hate. Fuller of all sorts of freedoms. Fuller of diversity and division. Fuller of blatant knowledge and harassing ignorance. Fuller of (market) makers, breakers, and shakers. Fuller of things to do and time wasted. How much happier though? Well, the promise of the fantastic (of the fantastically fabricated) - that better reality - is cashing in, to the fullest. It is colonizing the real world (if it hasn't already). It has made it a commodity. To live has become a commodity. 

The public has become (imho, not even properly) incentivized to catch imaginary monsters, landmarks and natural sites, thus having willingly and quite excitedly relinquish their physical awareness of actually identifying and hunting the real-life monsters. Since this is a thing now, as evasive as it is pervasive (even if not entirely and not always, but still way too often) then we're way off base calling it an 'augmented' anything, on the contrary, it is a redacted something, our reality made invisible or hypervisible (always blurred) for reasons above our ask grade - only to reappear virtually, changed, reconfigured, for the same classified reasons. If until recently we considered the image to represent or interpret the actual thing, now we're in it, experiencing it in real-time. I don't know if experiencing it virtually/digitally is better or worse, or even similar to imagining or dreaming it, but soon we'll feel nostalgic about those dream-ful/less nights when we were glad to wake up and find out that whatever we weren't able to remember anymore didn't actually happen and our bodies were in a a still position, asleep in bed or on the couch in front of the TV - distanced from an unconsciousness we could hid well, escape from and that we couldn't completely understand. This distance between the real and the unreal, at least physically speaking, made us aware of our bearings, alert of how far to reach and how close to guard our presence. Scale and sensibility. What once was a reality imagined, it has now metamorphosed into an image realized.

 

(videodrome, cronenberg) via GIPHY

Re-cognition patterns of understanding, behavior, language, meaning, memory and belonging are being re-shuffled, re-prioritized, re-valued - colonized and commodified. We are now swallowed in by the screen, voluntarily no less. Instead of using technology to augment our presence, awareness and sense of place - we've rendered our-selves as avatars, in pixels instead of cells, a specter of dematerialization and rematerialization between place and interface, presence and metadata, this and that. Bodies in space feel isolated, excluded the more they are connected - unable to interact seamlessly and prone to accidents, our deduction abilities stalling, cryptic, wasted. The promised 'enhancement' is being felt in the incompatibilities of the two realities, and not in their collaboration. We've got a long way to go. We are being exploited, voluntarily. 

The fear of not measuring up to real-life humanity, the banality of (what we actually dread just as much) the everyday life, has made this game, these campaigns and all their cohorts (including media) result to an 'alternat(e/ive)' reality, that is not just an image or propaganda, but a lived slogan. A promise is a promise is a promise is a promise is a ... lie is a life. It hasn't quite augmented the goods, only the bads. It has only enhanced the real by providing a brief escape into the virtual, only to bring us right back to the terrors, trials, and trivial gravity of this world. 

The question then, is not just what are the physical ramifications of such an alternate everyday, but how do we deal with them? What are the consequences of designing everything without taking into account the human factor: spatial behavior and mental state, cognition and hormones, and everything else that overly-designed environments tend to kill?

So, when you decide to play Pokemon, like or react to a campaign image or video on social media, think about these things. What we ought to believe and what we do indeed believe in are constellations apart. Yes, the truth is out there, but so are the stars and so is the abyss. Plenty of room to get lost. Again, scale and sensibility. 

Lastly, I'd like to leave you and end these scattered thoughts with this quote from The Shining: "Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters." Plenty to think about.

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