Moments of inspiration can be seen when walking by a bunker converted into a tattoo parlor, a hotel room, a restaurant, a chicken pen, a canvass for street art, or even a festival site
TIRANA, Sept. 17 – Bunkers in the Dajti Mountain just outside Tirana were the site of this year’s fourth edition of the BunkerFest bringing several rock bands, folk musicians and DJs from East Europe performing in Albania from Sept. 14 to 15.
This is precisely what Bunkerfest is about, “showcasing good musical talent (rock music, folk music, and DJs), engaging people from a range of backgrounds and inspiring creativity and social cohesion”. “As a team of volunteers we have enjoyed bringing together people from around the Balkans to Bunkerfest, where not only have we captured their musical attention but sparked people toward thinking about our past and the value in protecting and nurturing our environment for a more creative and socially rich future,” organizers say.
Some 700,000 bunkers were built during Albania’s communist regime from paranoid Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha to protect Albania from imaginary foreign assault.
Only a few people, mainly those with a creative mind, are reusing bunkers in a positive way. Moments of inspiration can be seen when walking by a bunker converted in to a tattoo parlor, a hotel room, a restaurant, a chicken pen, a canvass for street art, or even a festival site. There is a small but growing movement in Albania to celebrate these adorable concrete mushrooms. With this in mindŠBunkerFest’s motto is “spread the love”, we love our concrete mushrooms and this festival is dedicated to them.
Last year’s Bunkerfest festival was held in the village of Peza, Tirana.
A concrete mushroom – symbol of Albania’s 45-year paranoid isolation, some items from the notorious Spac prison of the former politically persecuted, and some pieces of the Berlin Wall – whose collapse marked the end of communism in Eastern Europe are the objects used in a recently created installation dedicated to Albania’s almost five decades of isolation under communism. Placed just at the entry of the former Bllok area, home to the country’s former communist elite and just in front of the central boulevard and the former central committee in Tirana, the memorial features Albania’s suppression of freedoms and rights, prison and torture under late dictator Enver Hoxha.
