Commissioned by Manifesta 14: Prishtina 2022
Curated by Petrit Abazi. Artists Stanislava Pinchuk and Piers Greville.
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Petrit Abazi: Curatorial Premise
This collaborative project is driven by three individuals: Stanislava Pinchuk, Piers Greville and Petrit Abazi. The curator, Abazi, has approached artists Pinchuk and Greville because he believes their art practices are perfectly suited to intelligently address the historical and contemporary issues affecting the citizens of northern Kosovo. Their strong portfolios demonstrate a genuine interest in producing socially and politically engaged art. Together, they propose to deliver a body of community-minded, research-based, narrative-informed and process-driven visual arts and literary commissions, bringing regional perspectives to Prishtina while directly responding to this Manifesta Biennial’s curatorial concepts.
Growing up in Mitrovica in the 1980s and 1990s, the north and the south of the city were not the binary opposites they are today. Devoid of boundaries or divisions, Abazi saw his world as a loose web of interconnected and trans-cultural nodes of public spaces. For example, the main bridge that crosses the Ibar River was once a popular congregation point. However, bilateral post-war politics have cast a long shadow over the crossing. Instead of connecting its citizens, it separates them. While much of Kosovo is experiencing civic, cultural and economic regeneration, Mitrovica, only 37km north of the capital, is quietly regressing into a societal stalemate. The weakest link in the delicate chain stabilising the region, northern Kosovo is in desperate need of repair and unity. Therefore, it is the ideal place to investigate how public spaces and the natural environment can be reclaimed, retold and re-presented. We believe art has the power to challenge the status quo. The following proposals by Pinchuk and Greville intend to do just that.
Stanislava Pinchuk: Europe without Monuments
artist proposalPinchuk asks: How can cities rebuild themselves and how can architecture create peaceful coexistence between different groups of people? She asks this as a citizen of Kharkiv, Ukraine, living in Sarajevo. Interested in using what is already in a space or culture as a metonym for future solutions, Pinchuk proposes to make her work in the Ibar river, taking the Mitrovica Miners Monument – a concrete spomenik built by architect, civil servant & urban planner Bogdan Bogdanovic – as a starting point. The structure commemorates the WWII resistance of local multi-ethnic miners against fascism. It references a common history and resistance to oppression. Modern understandings of the monument negate the bipartisan legacy once forged.
Her proposed installation fragments the visual iconographies of the spomenik as a site of resistance and commonality in the river- building temporary monuments along the dried summer banks, into a structure to be climbed, enjoyed, picnicked and suntanned on. The structure will be made and used in an informal, citizen-led approach- looking at new traditions and ways of togetherness in the liminal space of the border, crawling within the empty space left by the concrete structure of the spomenik- to be nimble, re-useable, adaptable and joyous without prescriptive use. The installation appears not so much as a deconstructed spomenik, but almost as an architectural drawing of it come to life.
> See Stanislava Pinchuk’s recent work at: stanislavapinchuk.com
Europe Without Monuments
. Location drawing with elements scaled and placed.
Europe Without Monuments. Location drawing, minumum scale scenario.
Europe Without Monuments. Location drawing, maximum scale scenario
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Scaffolding quantity calculation sketch
Europe Without Monuments. Proposed Grand Hotel Prishtina installation sketch
Full Text: How can cities rebuild themselves and how can architecture create peaceful coexistence between different groups of people? How can we orientate what we to do to enrich our lives toward a celebrated diversity that we would never forsake in favour of a monoculture?
I write this as a citizen of Kharkiv, living in Sarajevo – watching in horror Day 3 of its illegal occupation, based now in a city that understands much more than most others. Officially today, we can say – war crimes, war criminals. Roads annexed. Ukrainians holding more force than expected. Cities seiged or seiging themselves in protection. Children in the casualties now.
Our ruins, then and today’s, tell us who we are – how they came to be, how they were repaired, when they were repaired, by whom and in favour of what. We must, then – learn to first read our cities, before writing them. Too many cities have been written by those who don’t read – turned into living necropolises by autocrats, nefarious regimes, fundamentalists, corporations and bureaucracies. Resilient cities with soul must be written with informality – through citizens. Rebuilding should comefrom joy and unity as acts of the highest resistance – love as the driver of both policy and poetics.
I am interested in using what is already in a space or culture as a metonym for future solutions – in expanding what we are already good at, or already practicing, to ourfuture needs. Today, I see in full use the extraordinary strength, freedom and heroism of everyday Ukrainians – using in full force what we already had.
In this way, I propose to make my work in the Ibar river. While rivers serve as natural geographic, linguistic or economic dividers – they likewise remain facilitators, connectors of travel and movement. Waterways give opportunity to open thinkingtoward amorphous political borders - after all, how could we propose to annex a flowing current into a perfect half segment?
In a city whose admirable New Bridge remains a point of tension, barricading and KFOR-MSU patrol – it is perhaps a proposition to find middle ground in a natural space to which we feel a greater softness, playfulness or kindness. A space in which there is an ability to enjoy and swim together in liminal territory. After all, if we can’t agree on a bridge - we have to just get into the river.
Paired with this is the metonym of the Mitrovica Miners Monument – built by architect, civil servant & urban planner Bogdan Bogdanovic. A concrete spomenik commemorating the WWII resistance of local multi-ethnic miners against fascism, and located on Mitrovica’s northern bank – the architectural sculpture references a common history and resistance to oppression unique and indispensable to the citytoday. Likewise, the mine was an important site of mobilisation and resistance in the atrocities of the 1990s.
Bogdanovic, a Serbian Yugoslav architect, served as mayor of Belgrade in the rise of Milosevic. Issuing warnings and concerns of rising nationalism, and refusing complicity – Bogdanovic was ultimately ousted from his position. Exiled first to Paris, Bogdanovic relocated to Vienna until his death – wishing to remain connected to waterway of his beloved Danube. In every spomenik design, Bogdanovic himself aimed to express one of the elements: water, fire, earth or air.
Building spomeniks which refused nationalist, ethnic or propagandist motifs, Bogdanovic preferred to reference nature, history and story telling – designing sites which often feel like playgrounds, or playful ruins of another mystical civilisation – that could be satwith, played on or gathered around like living parts of the city. Critically, the sites think about ancient time and deep futures – the way in which their meaning maychange with the equally critical acts of both remembering and forgetting.
The Miners Monument in Mitrovica, particularly - makes reference to a coal mining cart, but also a suspended bridge between two pillars. Interestingly, the site itself has become politicised and loaded - with different languages and banks of the city giving different names for the spomenik. Some names, such as “the barbecue” nod to ahumour and unity - while some, such as the “Serb Monument” - for both its location and architect, understandably negate a certain history and bipartisan legacy once forged.
As such, the reference is not only to the history of Kosovo, but also of Ukraine – in its great sacrifices to the fight against fascism and their pivotal role in the re-establishment of the European peace project and the existence of the EU — while being notably, failed by both in modern history.
As such, the proposed installation fragments the visual iconographies of the Miners Monument as a site of resistance and commonality in the river – building temporary monuments along the dried summer banks, into a structure to be climbed, enjoyed, picnicked and suntanned on. The structure is made and used in an informal, citizen-led approach – looking at new traditions and ways of togetherness in the liminal space of the border, crawling within the empty space left by the concrete structure of the spomenik – to be nimble, re-useable, adaptable and joyous without prescriptive use. The installation appears not so much as a deconstructed spomenik, but almost as an architectural drawing of it come to life — with scaffolding arranged not as a replica, but as a suggestion.
In empty space, what we share is loss – but also memory, togetherness – and the ability to forge toward the new. Out of the empty space of our monuments comes something vital and temporary – a proposition for rebuilding and togetherness, for a new tradition.
> See Stanislava Pinchuk’s recent work at: stanislavapinchuk.com
Piers Greville: What Is Here
artist proposalLive page here
Lab River and Sitnica River, flowing out of Prishtina to Mitrovica. Ibar River, flowing from Montenegro via Mitrovica and north to Serbia.
An ecological immersion, staying against the flow: The Iber River bridge in Mitrovica, in the north of Kosovo had been a flashpoint during the Kosovo war of 1998/99. Even now it is a point of territorial tension, unresolved conflict and division. Running through the centre of Mitrovica, the river has fluctuated between a community divide to a de facto national border with a checkpoint. This project proposes a reimagining of the role the river has in the landscape as a permeable, liminal space to be entered and engaged with. From an ecological standpoint as well, the river represents a living system to be nurtured. The act of swimming places our vulnerable bodies in a fluid connection with and to the landscape. Swimming is a symbolic act of yielding to the river’s ecology, and as in Donna J. Haraways’ title / call for action, of ‘staying with the trouble’. It is a demonstration of our ecological / political kinship and the river’s value.
By swimming upstream in a river at the exact same pace as the water is flowing down, the swimmer remains stationary, only the water passes. The goal for participants in this action is to swim away a ‘distance’ of water equal to the distance along the watercourses upstream to the specified place. This symbolic act swims the distance of water between the two places, linking them. Therefore Drawing Rivers Together is conceived as a collective action of pulling the landscape together. Of the two main rivers which flow into Mitrovica, one flows down from Prishtina, another from the Mountains in Montenegro via Serbia. They join on the northern edge of Mitrovica and flow northwards Serbia, eventually joining other rivers to form the Danube. Swimmers swim within a framework, literally and figuratively: a propositional space, akin to architectural propositions like a Baugespann.
A swim is as good as a bridge.
The title What Is Here is borne of the struggle to remain, in defiance of the currents which exert an endless pressure. It is also this deep consciousness of being present which results from the meditative focus of the swimming act. Deep inside the mind of the swimmer, as the sound is distorted and suppressed, the eyes are trained on a pebble, a still marker on the riverbed. In the chaotic struggle to remain in place against a freezing river and swirling eddies, this marker becomes the meditative focus, the essence of staying with the trouble. The people of the north and south are also in this struggle, similarly they remain due to their steadfast action in spite of pressures flowing from far away.
This is a proposition for a space to be occupied by bodies, a reframing of the space from a dividing line to a collaborative space, from a fleeting passage to an enduring space. Citizens are invited to swim in relay, to accumulate a symbolic distance over the course of the opening days and weeks of Manifesta, during which the swim is visible via a live video feed, projected in a space in Prishtina. Meanwhile, a countdown of the accrued ‘distance’ will determine when the action is over. The distance between Prishtina and Mitrovica along the Sitnica, Lab and Ibar rivers is about 48km, even given the varied flow of the Ibar River, a relay of swimmers may possibly complete this in 24hrs total. Of course, it also could take much longer.
A livestream video of the swimto be viewed 40km away upstream in Prishtina will conceptually create a loop, the water streaming down and the video returning the stream at ameasures pace. After the swimmers stop, the video record of this swim continue to play in The Grand Hotel Prishtina, Room 506. This will comprise an enduring archive and testament to the cooperative potential of the space.
> See Piers Greville’s recent work at: piersgreville.com
What Is Here, 2022 - (L) Working sketches for a swimming framework as a reference to Baugespanne. A floating propositional architecture for swimming in the River Iber. (R) Two flags hoisted on the broken bridge, daily during the performance are adorned with two depictions of the surrounding terrain, one looking north, one looking south.
River video sketch, overhead (L) and south bank (R) views of stationary swim. River Iber, at ‘Ura e Tre Soliterave’ 13 April 2022
Swim frame design foam floats, working 3D sketch. Working premise instalation sketch, located at ‘Ura e Tre Soliterave’ over the River Iber, Mitrovica .
Preliminary installation sketch: a room in Grand Hotel Prishtina
Taking inspiration from Manifesta’s use of billboards, topographies would be painted on fabric and displayed as flags giving citizens a periscopic sense of their place in the greater surrounding terrain, referencing something along the lines of Hanna Arendt’s ‘enlarged mentality’. In acknowledgement of the significance of the mineral resource extraction from the region, the painted surfaces are to employ, through their use of pigments, a significant link to the geological history of the terrain.
The north gazing south and the south gazing north, this work represents these diametrical gazes as if from high above, but brought closer. The flag is thought of here as a problematic saviour. Rather than flying from flagpoles, are instead re-thought as a periscope, offering an elevated view, and in doing so to an enlarged mentality. The aim being to provide a visible periscopic sense of emplacement in the greater surrounding terrain.
While locations are to be determined through site visits and consultation with the creative mediator, curatorial team, and community, Superview’s preferred sites are within Prishtina Mitrovica. In Mitrovica, the artist’s aim is for Superview to be suspended over the river in Mitrovica, visible from the New Bridge. The cables suspending the flags form visual bonds, tentatively tying the banks together. In Prishtina, the installation is envisaged as elevated and viewed in the centre of the city.
The flags depict a landscape superview, in a neutral isometric perspective where distances do not converge. Morning light cast from the east with no territorial markers, vegetation or mapping elements present other than simply terrain, leaving this open minded to both its identity and use. It is a flag claiming for nobody or nothing, other than asserting the terrain as an apolitical canvas.
> See Piers Greville’s recent work at: piersgreville.com
Participating Artists in Manifesta 14 Pristina (Kosovo) were:
Petrit Abazi (1983 Kosovo)
Piers Greville (1972 Australia)
Stanislava Pinchuk (1988 Ukraine)
Astronomy Club of Kosova (Kosovo)
Bora Baboçi* (1988 Albania)
Valentina Bonizzi (1982 Italy)
Anna Bromley (1971 Germany)
Luz Broto (1982 Spain)
Lee Bul (1964 Korea)
Lúa Coderch (1982 Peru)
Ilir Dalipi (1981 Kosovo)
Yael Davids (1968 Israel)
Cevdet Erek (1974 Turkey)
ETEA (Kosovo)
Jakup Ferri (1981 Kosovo)
Foundation 17 (Kosovo)
Núria Güell (1981 Spain)
Driton Hajredini (1970 Kosovo)
Artan Hajrullahu (1979 Kosovo)
Laureta Hajrullahu (1997 Serbia/Kosovo)
Petrit Halilaj (1986 Kosovo)
Flaka Haliti (1982 Kosovo)
Have it Collective (Kosovo)
Roni Horn (1955 USA)
Majlinda Hoxha (1984 Kosovo)
Astrit Ismaili (1991 Kosovo)
Fitore Isufi Shukriu Koja (1982 Kosovo)
Hristina Ivanoska (1974 North Macedonia)
Emily Jacir (1972 Palestine)
Šejla Kamerić (1976 Bosnia and Herzegovina)
AntonetaKastrati (1981 Kosovo)
Doruntina Kastrati (1991 Kosovo)
Genti Korini (1979 Albania)
Argjire Krasniqi (1989 Kosovo)
Edona Kryeziu (1994 Kosovo)
Katalin Ladik (1942 Hungary)
Brilant Milazimi (1994 Kosovo)
Hana Miletić (1982 Croatia)
Alketa Xhafa Mripa (1980 Kosovo)
Alban Muja (1979 Kosovo)
Sami Mustafa (1984 Kosovo/France)
Silvi Naçi (1981 Albania)
Natasha Nedelkova (1993 North Macedonia)
Tuan Andrew Nguyen (1976 Vietnam)
Vigan Nimani (1981 Kosovo)
Christian Nyampeta (1981 Netherlands)
Adrian Paci (1969 Albania/Italy)
Marta Popivoda (1982 Serbia)
Marubi National Museum of Photography (Albania)
Pykë Presje (Kosovo)
Lala Raščić (1977
Bosnia and Herzegovina)
raumlaborberlin (Germany)
Alicja Rogalska (1979 Poland/UK)
Roma MoMa (DE/RS) with Farija Mehmeti (1978
Roma/Kosovo)
Ugo Rondinone (1964 Switzerland)
Sahej Rahal (1988 India)
Nusret Salihamixhiqi (1931 Kosovo)
Oral History Initiative/Secondary Archive (Kosovo/Poland)
Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation (Poland)
Tirana Art Lab (Albania)
Ambasada Kultury (Belarus)
Meet Factory (Switzerland)
Easttoppics (Hungary)
CZKD (Serbia)
BJÖRNSONOVA (Slovakia)
Artsvit Gallery (Ukraine)
Sekhmet Institute (Kosovo)
Selma Selman (1991 Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Driton Selmani (1987 Kosovo)
Abi Shehu (1993 Albania)
Chiharu Shiota (1972 Japan)
Speculative Tourism (Israel)
Starry Skies of Humanity
Raoul Schrott (1964 Austria)
Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle (1960 1954 USA)
Story Lab (Kosovo)
tamtam (Austria/Germany)
Miryana Todorova (1984 Bulgaria)
Vangjush Vellahu (1987 Albania)
Alije Vokshi (1945 Kosovo)
Werker Collective (Netherlands)
Sislej Xhafa (1970 Kosovo)
Yll Xhaferi (1988 Kosovo)
Miki Yui (1971 Japan)
Driant Zeneli (1983 Albania)
Hana Zeqa (1988 Kosovo)
Lulzim Zeqiri (1978 Kosovo)
Dardan Zhegrova (1991 Kosovo)