TIRANA, Oct. 13 – Several Austrian artists will be in Albania this weekend to showcase artworks, discuss art and perform dances.
Events will kick off on Friday evening, Oct. 14 with Austrian artist Peter Kogler who will introduce his “Just Hanging around” exhibition at the Center for Openness and Dialogue, an art space located at the Prime Minister’s office which since one year “has offered students and researchers, artists and curators, journalists and civil society activists, and the public at large a place where ideas take form, critical thinking informs art, and culture enlightens politics, a home where together they can emancipate the policies that will lead to tomorrow’s progress.”
Born in Innsbruck, Peter Kogler, 57, lives and works in Vienna. The self-taught artist comes under the influence of American minimalist artists. He has been honored in the category Computer Graphics for work “Untitled I” by the jury of the Prix Ars Electronica.
The newest art space in the northern Albanian city of Shkodra run by Albanian contemporary artist Adrian Paci, The Art House, will also host on Saturday, Oct. 15, an artist talk with Austrian curator Katherina Schendl and Kosovo artist Flaka Haliti.
The Austrian curator will unveil her curatorial projects and introduce the LambdaLambdaLambda contemporary art gallery in Prishtina while Kosovo artist Flaka Haliti will showcase some of her works.
LambdaLambdaLambda is the first international gallery for contemporary art in Prishtina that started as a project space in early 2015. Its aim is to provide artists and audience with an intimate and informal environment conducive to experimentation, discussion and learning, especially by bringing together international and local artists.
Flaka Haliti was the winner of the 2016 “Ars viva Prize” awarded by Germany’s Association of Art and Culture. Haliti also represented Kosovo at the Venice Biennale and won the “October Salon” award in Belgrade. Haliti, 35, lives and works between Munich, Prishtina and Vienna. Her work is conceptual, based on mix media.
The three-day events will close with the “Shake it out” performance by Christian Ubl, an Austrian artist living and working in France.
“To me, Shake it out is a reflection on and a look at the place of tradition. I would like to question the European identity in our contemporary society as well as in today’s choreography, and to revisit tradition as a potential identity, with strong roots and an immaterial heritage,” says Ubl.
As an Austrian living and working in France, Christian Ubl is torn between the identity of his country of origin and that of his adopted homeland. He is strongly aware of these two different identities intertwining within his own body. This duality has led him to examine the concept of European identity and how it can be portrayed on stage.
“Tradition, flags, folklore, origin and belonging question the transmission and the need to “give or hand over to another” in order to maintain a collective awareness. Through a subtle resistance and a gentle mutation throughout generations, tradition remains, according to my understanding, a modern topic that has rarely been broached and looked at in contemporary choreography,” adds Christian Ubl.
Christian Ubl’s approach to dancing is very eclectic, and throughout his career he has used ice-skating as well as Latino dance-sport in his creations, which earned him a number of prizes at internal competitions.
The performance supported by the Austrian and French embassies in Tirana will be staged on Sunday evening, Oct. 16 at the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet.
