Residency and exhibition platform ⋮

 

8.11.—17.11.2024

format

platform

dates

23.10.24, 7 pm, Lecture by JONIDA GASHI and ARMANDO LULAJ
venue: Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, new buildung, room E.O1.23

24.10.24, 11 am, Workshop by JONIDA GASHI
Registration via jourfixe@adbk.de.

25.10.24, 10 am, Workshop by ARMANDO LULAJ
Registration via jourfixe@adbk.de

25.10.24, 5.30 pm, FILM SCREENING III
Screening Session at Werkstattkino, Fraunhoferstraße 9, back buliding

07.11.24, 7 pm, opening & concert by DHERVI
Opening of the final ⋮ exhibitive structure, followed by a live performance by the polyphonic group of the cultural association of Derviçan “Dhervi”

08.11.24, 7 pm, Lecture by KLODIANA MILLONA and ENDI TUPJA
Presentation of "I had white cotton in my yard, I fed it, I watered it: A polyphony on femaleness and border geographies".

13.11.24, 7 pm, Lecture by SEZGIN BOYNIK
Presentation of Pykë-Presje, a platform working mainly with printed matter and running an independent cultural space and bookshop in Prizren.

17.11.24, 5 – 7 pm, FINISSAGE + CONCERT BY ROSI ⁠

Hall, studio, lokal [vorne]

Now closed

closed

external links

interelliptic.info

The simultaneous punctuation mark, ⋮ — also referred to as vertical ellipsis1 in mathematics — is typically reserved for marking a missing term in a matrix that reads from top to bottom. Where a single value is unknown or general duration to be suggested, the three vertical dots will appear. In narrative fiction2, time allocates itself simultaneously to both sides of the mark.

⋮ is a nomadic residency platform across and between Vlora, Prishtina, and Munich, revolving around the interception of ten young artists and interdisciplinary practitioners who, having not had contact with each other beforehand, work within an open, itinerant and process-based exhibition structure. The first section of the project, taking place from 10.06. - 01.08.2024 in the Southern Balkans at Galeria e Bregdetit (Vlora) and Hani i 2 Robertëve (Prishtina) in collaboration with Foundation17 (Pristina) is accompanied by artist talks, screenings, cooking and listening sessions alongside the exhibitions. The second section of the project, concluding from 22.10. - 17.11. at the Lothringer 13 Halle (Munich), bridges the exhibition series to a close with a large-scale overview of the project’s aftermath, whilst operating as a dialogical space for encounter accompanied by a publication release, lectures, concerts, and screenings.

Operating in environments discerned as socio-economically distinct to a radical extent, the project aims to identify commonalities and themes which transcend geographical borders. Since these distinctions are seen (e.g. from the perspective of various cultural funding politics) as a determinant as well as a driver for transformation processes, with a wish to create a common ground of idealistic exchange and probing political conditioning within such environments, one might ask the following: what occurs with the contestation of the necessity for exchange-driven development, adaptation, and futurist-oriented narratives?

The project seeks to navigate within and throughout local, international, epicentral and peripheral nodes of production and mediation of geopolitical interests amidst tainted cultural spheres of influence. The successive residency periods, therefore providing for intensive on-site discourse on production and representation, thus define spatio-temporal parameters for site-specific inquiry only insofar as to point to its conditioning elsewhere. Embodying a momentum both linear and nonlinear, the resulting platform thus approaches knowledge production in a processual, ephemeral and eclectic sense, while based on trust. Essentially observing specificity (simultaneity) in constant becoming.

The production of ⋮ is part of its mediation, where the narrative of influence may be speculated, and reflected upon in an epistemic way – whilst still speaking to the myths of artistic practice and site-specific parastructure in artistic production. In addition to its narrative function, the simultaneity mark ⋮ might help to visualise multiple, contradictory ideas and provoke scepticism about the hierarchy of a left-to-right reading system. Overall, the scope of establishing a platform for long-term exchange is of substantial interest in light of the historical and complex migratory entanglements and converging geopolitical dynamics; a matrix housing multiple simultaneities.

⋮ is developed by Andrea Veselá and Martin Huber in exchange with Elian Stefa, Fabio Toska, Nita Zeqiri, Fitore Isufi Shukriu, Lisa Britzger, Rosa Luckow and Tesa Kabashi. The project is supported by Akademieverein, BBK Bayern, Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts, BAYHOST, Kulturreferat München, Goethe Zentrum Tirana, Goethe Zentrum Prishtina and ZoomEuropa.

Participants: Laureta Hajrullahu, Martin Huber, Rosa Luckow, Xhulian Millaj, Elsaida Musiq, Elsamina Musiq, Ludwig Neumayr, Hana Qena, Somer Şpat and Andrea Veselá. Program: Arshikët e Gjakovës, Artjom Astrov, Sezgin Boynik, Dhervi, Jonida Gashi, Tesa Kabashi, Armando Lulaj, Klodiana Millona, Manuel Sékou and Endi Tupja. Website and design by Levin Jaensch, Nicolas Marino, Nikolai Rusu. Code by Severin Brunhuber. Documentation by Ludwig Neumayr. Albanian translation by Endi Tupja.

[1] The term originates from the Ancient Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis meaning 'leave out'. 
[2] With the invented application he suggests for this mark, Samuel R. Delany proposed an impossibility: that the reader take in two or more actions in the English language’s typical left-to-right reading order, but, in recognising the mark separating these actions, understand that they occur in perfect sync with one another, and not side-by-side in a narrative timeline.



PROGRAM

Wed, 23.10., 7 pm
[Akademie der Bildenden Künste München]
LECTURE BY JONIDA GASHI AND ARMANDO LULAJ
The presentation takes place in the new buildung, room E.O1.23. Jonida Gashi and Armando Lulaj show Debatik Center of Contemporary Art's MANIFESTO, a multidisciplinary project that brings together artists, curators, historians, architects, writers, cultural theorists, Albanians or non-Albanians, etc., to reflect on the current state of contemporary art in Albania and beyond, with the aim of provoking a "momentum" capable of breaking the current artistic and historical narrative by proposing an alternative. Given the current political and geographical state, this movement proposes itself as an antagonistic project and laboratory of ideas in a territory where the neoliberal experiment fused with contemporary art is more evident than ever. Unlike many of its neighbours, Albania has not invented a great historical narrative. Here, the conditions of modernism are still able to open up different possibilities for art, possibilities that can be developed without replicating situations and experiences that have already happened elsewhere. The Manifesto project has been analysing and working on these particularities for several years, through its first two editions, Manifesto HIJACKING (2022) and Manifesto DESERTION (2023). In this third edition, Manifesto comes as a GREAT WAVE (2024-25), proposing a new movement in the visual, cinematographic, theoretical and political arts: a movement that deconstructs the country's past along with its current neoliberal consolidation, offering a critical retrospective perspective that focuses on social reality and proposes a new historical narrative of Albanian art and society.

Jonida Gashi is a senior researcher at the Centre for Art Studies at the Academy of Sciences of Albania. Her research interests include contemporary art theory and criticism, film theory and cinema history, and the artistic experience of post-socialism in contemporary Albania. She is currently completing her first monograph on the newsreels and documentary films of the Albanian communist show trials and their influence on Albanian Socialist Realist cinema. Gashi is the editor-in-chief of Art Studies, published annually by the Academy of Albanian Studies, and one of the founders of the Debatik Center of Contemporary Art (D.C.C.A). debatikcenter.net
Armando Lulaj is a writer of plays, texts on risk territories, filmmaker, and producer of conflict images. His research is oriented towards accentuating the border between economical power, fictional democracy, and social disparity in a global context. In 2003 he co-founded the Debatik Center of Contemporary Art. In today’s incarnation, D.C.C.A is a nexus of artists, filmmakers, curators, academics, etc. who seek to shed light on the ways in which our contemporary society works, but also offer the necessary tools to imagine alternative futures and strategies of resistance to the status quo. Lulaj's work is part of important public and private collections.

Thu, 24.10.m  11 am 
[Lothringer 13 Halle]
WORKSHOP ⁠BY JONIDA GASHI
"The Archive and the Disaster" will focus on the collection of the Centre for Artistic Documentation (Centre for Art Studies, Academy of Sciences of Albania) and the urgency as well as the challenges of building a comprehensive archive of documentary material pertaining on the emergence and development of post-socialist art in Albania. A key question raised during the workshop will be if and how the archive might be used as a tool for understanding not only the past, but also the present. Registration via jourfixe@adbk.de.

Fri, 25.10., 10 am
[Munich Central Station]
WORKSHOP BY ARMANDO LULAJ
"Walking the Process" will be a long walk through the city, or the forest, focusing on the importance of the process in the artist's work, but more importantly on those artistic attitudes (past and future) related to the artist's decision not to integrate into the art system. It will also explore the importance of learning and imposing one's own rules on the system of political power, including the art system, and will do so by walking through the arduous process of creation. Meeting point platform 21. Registration via jourfixe@adbk.de.

Fri, 25.10., 5.30 pm 
[Werkstattkino]
FILM SCREENING III
Last film screening session of the event series curated by Elsaida Musiq, Elsamina Musiq and Xhulian Millaj. With contributions by: Ornela Alia, Nora Bzheta, Efijeni Kokëdhima, Agrina Vllasaliu, Jozefina Vokrri. Further information at werkstattkino.de.

Thu, 07.11., 7 pm
[Lothringer 13 Halle]
OPENING + CONCERT BY DHERVI
Opening of the final ⋮ exhibitive structure, followed by a concert from the polyphonic group of the cultural association of Derviçan “Dhervi”.
Dhervi are a group of Greek-Albanian women singers who preserve and practice the ancient tradition of polyphonic singing from the Epirus region. They live in the Greek-speaking village of Derviçan, in southern Albania, bordering Greece, and are part of the Greek minority in Albania. Singing in both Greek and Albanian, they carry on a tradition of singing that has been interrupted and fragmented by migration which has significantly carved out the region as well as their identities.

Fri 08.11., 7 pm
[Lothringer 13 Lokal]
LECTURE BY KLODIANA MILLONA AND ENDI TUPJA
Presentation of "I had white cotton in my yard, I fed it, I watered it: A polyphony on femaleness and border geographies". The project traces voice as a medium in the folklore tradition through a polyphonic topography of sound materiality. A double belonging between languages and cultures in the margins, offers ways of looking unto forms of “Souths” in Europe, gestures shaping an architecture of voices, and the hierarchical migration practices impacting the latter. Through singing sessions, recordings, interviews and the transcription and translation of text songs, the project explores how language and music are connected to the territory, to practices of migration and (un)mobility. Bodies are both archives and medium trajectories interrupted, but yet ongoing of preservation and activation. The project was realised within the framework of EMAP - European Media Art Platform and Residency Programme at Onassis Stegi.

Klodiana Millona (*1990, AL) is a researcher, spatial and visual practitioner working within and against architecture through moving image, sound, and text. Her work is grounded in the politics of space in relation to bodies, namely the politics of invisibility and invisibilized spatial practices, set against the hyper-visibility of certain bodies mobilised by regimes of surveillance. Thinking through mapmaking as a practice of erasing, extracting, and producing historical ruptures, she uses counter mapping to construct alternative cartographies that reveal state architecture’s integral role in national identity building. She is currently a resident at Jan van Eyck Academy. millonaliu.com
Endi Tupja is an artist, filmmaker, and cultural practitioner based between Berlin and Tirana. Her research centres on experimenting with strategies of memory recuperation, visuality and the subverted geographies influencing identity and history. In 2022 she was part of the Fellowship Program for Art and Theory at Künstler*innenhaus Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck (Austria). Her project at Centrale Fies, LIVE WORKS Vol. 10 – Free School of Performance (Dro/Italy), further expanded her research in performative writing and staging techniques of Albanian female voices in the Italian context between the 1990s and the present. For the aforementioned project she was awarded  the research Grant CAS SEE Fellowship 2023 University of Rijeka Center for Advanced studies South East Europe. Currently Endi Tupja is focusing on performative writing and micro biographies in the space of live performance and video installation. She is invested in exposing south to south narrations of subjugation within the Mediterranean area.⁠


Wed, 13.11., 7 pm 
[Lothringer 13 Lokal]
LECTURE AND PRESENTATION BY SEZGIN BOYNIK
Sezgin Boynik will present Pykë-Presje, a platform working mainly with printed matter and running an independent cultural space and bookshop in Prizren. Pykë-Presje [pü:k presye, Wedge-Comma], is active since 2021; it produces experimental radical publications and organises exhibitions, discursive programs and workshops. Pykë-Presje is building an archive and library, emphasising local histories of people’s movements, emancipatory women's organisations and class struggles defying the nation-state narratives. At Lothringer 13, three exhibition projects that Pykë-Presje has been working on over the past few years will be the focus of attention: “From Scratch: Albanian Summer Picaresque”, a project commissioned and exhibited at Manifesta Biennial in Pristina in 2022. “From Scratch” deals with an experimental musical album influenced by Albanian music released by the students of Cornelius Cardew in 1984 – it traces this unique encounter between experimental artists and militant leftists with an artistic installation, publication, and silk-screen posters. “Film as Political School” is an experimental project which aims to read the history of class struggle in Kosovo through film. The project, released as an exhibition and three booklets at the National Gallery in Pristina in 2023, looks at the inter-connection between fall of socialism and rise of nationalism in the late eighties and how it was perceived in film in Kosovo. Finally, “Translated into Socialism”, is an exhibition dealing with the little-known history of the Turkish-speaking community in Yugoslavia, more precisely, in Kosovo and Macedonia. The exhibition opened in October 2024 in Salt Galata in Istanbul, explores how, in a multinational social context, a Turkish identity was affirmed and transformed under socialist ideology.

Sezgin Boynik is a writer, editor and publisher based in Helsinki. He is the founder of Rab-Rab Press and co-founder of Pyke-Presje. rabrab.net
pykepresje.com

 

Sun, 17.11., 5–7 pm
[Lothringer 13 Halle]⁠
FINISSAGE + CONCERT BY ROSI ⁠
A final concert with rosi will form the end of the exhibition. rosi has performed several times during “⋮”, adapting to the different locations and their possibilities. For Lothringer 13 Halle, rosi may extend from a one-person-band to a more-than-one-person-band.