Greetings from an Elsewhere (2019)
“Greetings from an elsewhere” is a mixed media installation encompassing a video- montage and a series of photographs. The video consists of several VHS cassettes that are treated as personal but also collective archive speaking from and back to the Kosovar diaspora. The cassettes were used as a communication channel, in absence of internet and social media, to sent their regards from the diaspora to family members and friends in Kosovo but also in other parts of Europe, such as Sweden and Switzerland. It was the means to maintain close ties with those separated due to the aftermath of the Yugoslav conflict and the Kosovo war in 1999. The video shows how they kept familiarity in strangeness during times of distress. The scenes in the video are chosen on the basis of portraying the repetitive nature of the diasporic condition, coming together, separating again just to find refuge in traditional folklore, -again. The music was composed by Liburn Jupolli, carrying the viewer throughout this haunting journey of being there but simultaneously elsewhere, -in transit forever.
If the video is the negative, the photos are the positive of this project or the other way around. The six photographs encompass the neighborhood in which the artist was brought up in. Some of the footage in the video showing the private sphere was taking place within these tower blocks, here captured from the outside as the public sphere. Migrants from elsewhere often live in urban segregation due to socioeconomic inequality. Often they use the small space available to them to create life and warmth, furnishing these spaces with memories and symbols they can relate to. This installation greets not only Kosovars but also others from ‘an elsewhere’ who experienced migration at first or second hand, they are invited to stand in-between the public and the private space, the personal and collective.
Video-Password: greetingsfromhere
