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    domenica 12 febbraio 2012

    Last Night

     Note: Last night= early morning of 10 February 2011, the post was written in pieces during the timeline from that early morning (last night) till now (post publication)

     Today I wake up pretty late and I found my fb news feed in red. There were so many red pictures and two other blogs talking about what happened last night in Tirana. As it looks like, last night Lenin & Stalin were painted red.


    At the back of the National Art Gallery, there is a statute of Lenin, one of Stalin, one of a man worker, one of partisan girl and maybe some other ones, but that's what I remember. These statues since the early 90s (probably 91, when the system changed) have been moved here and there all over the city, to be hidden to the public. During the dictatorial era such statues could be found all over the country as a symbol of glorification of those days public figures (Stalin, Lenin & E. Hoxha) or other working figures. In 1991 when the system changed, (the huge statue of) Stalin was thrown down by democratic youngsters and other people who were celebrating the end of an obscure era.

    Now days the back of the national art gallery, by late night is used as a hiding place by youngster, who go there with their friends to chit-chat, to think about those times that they never tried (I myself am part of what is called the democratic generation, ppl who where born in the early 90s) and to drink and smoke whatever. My point is that, even if the government hiddest such statues, people who are curious about them will always find them or at the other hand you can not erase a part of history by hiding it.


     Yesterdays action can be seen in various ways: the rise of the young left; you can not hide from your past, it will always be there; an art movement etc.

    Politics in my country is a real chaos, there is an endless number of parties, it's like everyone who has more than 100 followers can open a political party. Even though there are two huge political camps, the right and the left (there is also a center, but at the end they will be part of the coalition who offers more goods) you can not tell what one or the other wants to get done if they get the power, it's like you vote for the party leader without having a clear idea about the party's program. The worse part is that either if the left or the right gets the power they wouldn't care much about the people.
    Labors union has no power, so it's time to have movement which will raise the social, political and environmental awareness.

    As I said before, the government for a long time has tried to hide from the past, the communist past. People may like it or not, there was an era when we were under dictatorship so by just moving some statues or other pieces of art of that era you can not just forget what has happened.

    I mostly like to see last nights movement, as an art movement. I see it as a "work in progress" over forgotten art pieces, a way to make them feel alive again.

    photo copyright: Xheni Alushi

     For more info you can check these other blog posts:
    http://albanianpyramids.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/komunikate/

    http://continentcontinent.cc/blog/2012/02/the-unofficial-view-of-tirana-36/

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