“Everything that used to be here is no more.”
Lamenting the choices of Prishtina’s city planners, Alban Muja directs my attention to a tiny steel fence, circling a chopped-up tree in the Zahir Pajaziti square. “They chop down an old tree, and then they put a fence around it. Who are they protecting it from?” I am certain he’s being rhetorical, but then he mutters an answer under his breath: “Probably themselves.”
Muja is like that, he runs toward an idea with an erratic energy and then suddenly splinters, reminding one of a pinball machine. He knows the streets well, and he is also well-known in the streets. We pause every so often, as he bounces from one greeting to another, basking briefly but consistently in every hug that follows. Everything about him, from his wavy, salt-and-pepper hair, to the way he twists his mustache under his baggy eyes, spells out artist. He seems to exist as a performance in the collective mind of the streets, as if he were a rumor spread by life.
As we start roaming the streets, I look for their names, but excepting the obvious targets, there is little information on offer. Muja’s documentary ‘“Blue Wall Red Door,” which he made with Yll Citaku, explores how people in Prishtina orient themselves, and what for them is the main object or building that they use for their orientation.
Street names have changed so often in Kosovo that people tend not to use them as a navigational tool. Muja quips how “the biggest challenge for Kosovars is when a foreigner with a map asks, ‘Where is this street?’” Most people, it seems, rely on buildings and monuments to figure out where they are at any given time.
Our conversation is sound-tracked and often intruded upon by a horde of industrial noises. “Prishtina is under construction,” Muja says as a strange cacophony of tongues overwhelms us: the vowel-based drone of cement mixers, harsh consonants springing through the bare teeth of electric chainsaws, engines revving up and exhaling thunderous chapters of smoke. Prishtina is in a crucial phase of remodeling its public persona, and Muja is nervous about what will happen to the streets, as if the streets were the metaphorical arteries of the public consciousness.
Looking around, it becomes clear to me that Prishtina is going through the perils of puberty. It has become conscious of the fact that the desire it feels toward foreign observers needs to be solicited through a good impression. Therefore, it has summoned all its surgeons and practitioners to alleviate the curse of post-war acne. These “urgent” renovations, though, have stretched out for a bit too long, leaving members of public like Muja wondering if these constructions will ever come to fruition. “It’s very rare that you will see them finish a public construction.” What about private construction, I ask him? “There’s a different rule for private construction. There’s a different rule when it’s your money or my money.”
Approaching Mother Teresa Boulevard, Muja is struck with a familiar grief that also translates as embarrassment. We observe the site of an abandoned building, and Muja doesn’t have to spell it out for me: For him, this is a reminder of Prishtina’s wasted opportunities.
“People don’t go to art, you have to bring art to the people. You look at this building, it’s perfect for hosting art exhibitions, which is what Prishtina needs right now — a commercial art scene — but for years, this building has remained empty,” he says.
The front of the building, facing the boulevard, is mostly laced with advertisement posters and some incoherent graffiti — except for the “don’t litter” sign, which shows a figure binning a swastika. However, Muja’s grief turns into a frustrated excitement (to which I become an accomplice) as we circle the corpse of the building like vultures. He points out the features that still hint at the possibility of flesh.
Behind the building is a porch, where one can easily imagine a cheerful gathering: the sort with champagne glasses and all sorts of philosophical chatter about art. Opposite the building are empty huts that are too old to accommodate the standards of modern living, but they would be ideal as spaces for art studios. There are walls begging to be projected upon, and it almost hurts to see them so bare. “People have fought for it,” Muja explains the long, legal battle concerning the ownership of the building, which is disputed both publicly and privately, “but while they are deciding who owns it, why not do something with it?”
Muja has similar ideas for the Sports Stadium. A row of disused shops on the outer rim of the stadium provides the perfect opportunity for a unique marriage between sports and the arts — something the world has yet to see. With no residential settlements nearby, these spaces would be perfect for artists to work in and bands to rehearse in, but they remain in a perpetual state of sacrifice, waiting to be used commercially by shop owners.
We walk farther, over chipped pavement, under lights “that are actually meant for highways,” held in position by what appears to be a plastic flower pot. Muja says such neglect is a hangover from the war, when deliberate neglect was a subversive tool against the enemy. “During the war, the yard belonged to the enemy.” So, what was outside could rot because it was the enemy’s loss. “I used to go out and smash streetlights, because the lights were a way to spot us easily. But there is no need for it today.”
We pass a monument depicting Mother Theresa. Her face has been vandalised in magic marker with someone’s nickname, and around her is a shallow ring of green, stagnant water. Most monuments in Prishtina receive similar levels of maintenance and Muja is inclined to take offense because he considers it disrespectful to the memory of the people Prishtina wishes to honor: “If you are going to do it, do it properly. But in Prishtina, things are either done wrong or not used properly.”
The Skanderbeg Statue, in front of the National Theatre, is the most curious of these monuments. It is in the honor of Gjergj Kastrioti (or Skanderbeg), who is an epic symbol of defiance and courage. During the 15th century, he legendarily fought off the Ottomans for decades. Curved sword in hand, he stands in the stirrups of a horse that is poised to leap. “But it has been copied from Albania!” Muja fumes with a touching desperation in his voice. He stands in front of the statue, almost imploring it to spill some originality on to the pavement, but it doesn’t.
What is odd about the statue is its position within Kosovo’s contemporary ties with Turkey. It balances itself on a tightrope between two competing historical narratives, an act that essentially subverts its bravado into a comical awkwardness.
Recently, the Balkan Trust for Democracy appointed a group of 60 historians from 11 southeast European countries to revise regional history books, on the account of disputed claims about the nature of the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans.
There is controversy regarding what the history books in Kosovo shall say: Did the Ottomans forcefully occupy the Balkans, or were they just peaceful administrators who were actually welcomed here?
If the latter is the choice of the day, then what does Skanderbeg represent if not an epic overreaction? “If they are going to rewrite the history books, then this statue has to go as well,” Muja says. This doesn’t seem to bother him, for he doubts he’ll be hurt by the loss of a copied item.
Later, when we stand in front of the Newborn monument — a collection of block letters, 3 meters high, that spells out NEWBORN. It brandishes painted flags from of all the countries that helped to deliver Kosovo into independence, and I wonder if it holds the key to Kosovo’s identity issues. Kosovo is not, in fact, not Newborn at all. It has past lives, histories, several umbilical chords forming an intricate knot that it doesn’t want to untangle. Kosovo’s attempts at clarity come at the expense of a profound identity that seems to lunge at Muja’s ankles from the dark, bottomless spaces between the pages of history books.
Finally, Muja takes me to look at a skeletal construction site next to Prishtina’s “central heating system,” far away from the center. Apparently, it has been standing there as an unfinished project for years. As Muja poses for a photo in front it, I notice how the insides of this site are covered in graffiti. I find these incoherent scribblings intriguing, because who would feel so passionately gregarious as to scribble these inarticulate ramblings in an obscure place like this? But “the medium doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how you tell a story, it is important that you tell it.”
Moreover, it doesn’t matter what the graffiti says, that it says anything is in itself a creative intervention that postulates a desire to make use of Prishtina’s eccentric deformities, such as this building itself. If Prishtina’s city planners do not take these self-evident truths into account, then Prishtina will not offer its best stories, but only the rattle of small talk.
