This morning I woke up to a rather surprising headline: “first gay marriage in Tirana.” The article referred to the marriage ceremony recently held in the residency of the UK Ambassador in Tirana, between Donald Holder and Michael Kane.
Read MoreAlthough there are also some independent candidates who may take a few votes here and there, the general opinion of the Tirana public and internationals “in-the-know” is that the municipal elections in Tirana will be a mere formality.
Read MoreThey had obviously taken the pictures of the whale, and the group of people carrying it, out of curiosity. But still the images failed to produce any satisfactory explanation. Now we only knew how it had entered, but still not why.
Read Morean important part of the image that the Rama government is intent on creating for Albania is based on his former accomplishments in urban development as Mayor of Tirana.
Read MoreThe Albanian justice system is unable – for a variety of well-known and very human reasons – to process the fact that four innocent people were shot in broad daylight by the Republic Guards.
Read MoreThat Albania occupies a curious part of the global (or at least, American) pop-cultural imagination has been observed in this magazine and elsewhere, but sometimes I am still surprised at how this country and its history have certain transformational characteristics that very few other nations seem to have.
Read MoreRecently, historian Bernd Fischer claimed that in fact the last German left on December 4, which was in turn heavily contested by Paskal Milo, etcetera. Why the fact of the last German leaving ought to determine the symbolic date of national liberation is beyond me, but I’m sure it’s very important to someone.
Read MoreWhile local journalists were once again busy regurgitating worn-down, coma inducing positions about yet another spectral appearance of Enver Hoxha at the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Tirana, very few cared to analyze the rather remarkable speech of PM Edi Rama at the 6th Annual Creative Time Summit on November 15 in Stockholm.
Read MoreAs the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of Albania from the German and Italian fascist forces by the communist-led National Liberation Army is less than a month away, it seems that, except for a man pissing on Enver Hoxha’s grave, no one is really concerned with what this liberation means, who performed it, and at what cost.
Read MoreThe former “Obelisk of Democracy” a.k.a. “Monument with Two Fingers” in Kavajë by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Being the son of a famed sculptor from the communist period who co-created, amongst many other works, the Independence Monument in Vlorë, and the Mother Albania statue on the National Martyrs’ Cemetery in Tiranë, one may expect…
Read MoreThe Pope is coming to Tirana and I won’t be there. I am stationed for the semester in Singapore, but nevertheless I will attempt to continue to write about Albania even though my distance from the real events on the ground may impede a thorough understanding. But perhaps this distance is also refreshing. So the Pope is coming to Tirana, on Sunday.
Read MoreThis Saturday, in the streaming rain, the Albanian LGBT community successfully held several events to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Like in 2012 and 2013, there was the Tirana Gay Ride, a “pride on bikes,” which this year for the first time passed without any incident, and even included some of the activists getting off their bikes and unrolling a large LGBT flag in front of the Albanian Parliament
Read MoreAlbania is inching forward to the third attempt to gain EU candidate status in June. After the country was denied this status for the second time last December owing to a Dutch veto, it is making considerable efforts to meet the “standards” yet again. This is a slightly perverse project.
Read MoreA new government also brings new protests. Now that the “Democratic” Party is in the opposition, it has tried at several moments in the past few months to use the momentum of seemingly unorganized and seemingly spontaneous protests to fire up a large popular movement against the recently installed government, to no avail, however.
Read MoreA while back I found an online edition of Anouck Durant and Gilles De Rapper’s monograph Ylli: Les couleurs de la dictature.
Read MoreI would like to offer you today a beginning of a meditation on the word yes, on the gesture of affirmation. We should take great care not to conflate affirmation and saying yes – saying it once, twice, or many times over – and in which language? All too easily. As I will try to elucidate, there is an abyss between saying yes and affirming that is not easily crossed, let alone bridged.
Read MoreMartin Heidegger by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei The following text was delivered at the opening of Cross-Examinations #2: How Much Fascism?, curated by WHW in collaboration with Mihnea Mircan, Extra City, Antwerp BE, October 5, 2012. I would like to begin with a definition from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s book Heidegger, Art and Politics: “Fascism is…
Read MoreOn the first of July, artists, curators, and art afficionados gathered at the gates of the Sharra landfill of Tirana to attend the inauguration of a public artwork by Kosovar artist Sislej Xhafa…
Read MoreWhen medievalists Eileen Joy and Nicola Masciandaro grew exasperated with the academic publishing industry, they started their own alternative, punctum books.
Read MoreMonsters University, Walt Disney Pictures, forthcoming 2013 by Eileen A. Joy This time it is not I who seek it out […] it is the element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me. A Latin word exists to designate this wound, this prick, this mark made by…
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