Galeria e Bregdetit, SH8 Vlorë-Orikum Km 8, Vlorë 9426, Albania
Rezidenca 17, 271 St. Nazim Gafurri, Prishtina 10000 and the City of Prishtina, Kosovo
Lothringer 13 Halle, Munich, Lothringer Straße 13, Germany
The simultaneous punctuation mark, ⋮—also referred to as vertical ellipsis [1] in mathematics—is typically reserved for marking a missing term in a matrix that reads from top to bottom. Where a single value is unknown or general duration to be suggested, the three vertical dots will appear. In narrative fiction [2], time allocates itself simultaneously to both sides of the mark.
⋮ is a nomadic residency platform across and between Vlora, Prishtina, and Munich, revolving around the interception of ten young artists and interdisciplinary practitioners who, having not had contact with each other beforehand, work within an open, itinerant and process-based exhibition structure. The first section of the project, taking place from June 10–July 15, 2024 in the Southern Balkans at Galeria e Bregdetit (Vlora) and in collaboration with Foundation 17 (Pristina) is accompanied by artist talks, screenings, cooking and listening sessions alongside the exhibitions. The second section of the project, concluding from October 22–November 17, 2024 at the Lothringer 13 Halle (Munich), bridges the exhibition series to a close with a large-scale overview of the project’s aftermath, whilst operating as a dialogical space for encounter accompanied by a publication release, lectures, concerts, and screenings.
Operating in environments discerned as socio-economically distinct to a radical extent, the project aims to identify commonalities and themes which transcend geographical borders. Since these distinctions are seen (e.g. from the perspective of various cultural funding politics) as a determinant as well as a driver for transformation processes, with a wish to create a common ground of idealistic exchange and probing political conditioning within such environments, one might ask the following: what occurs with the contestation of the necessity for exchange-driven development, adaptation, and futurist-oriented narratives?
The project seeks to navigate within and throughout local, international, epicentral and peripheral nodes of production and mediation of geopolitical interests amidst tainted cultural spheres of influence. The successive residency periods, therefore providing for intensive on-site discourse on production and representation, thus define spatio-temporal parameters for site-specific inquiry only insofar as to point to its conditioning elsewhere. Embodying a momentum both linear and nonlinear, the resulting platform thus approaches knowledge production in a processual, ephemeral and eclectic sense, while based on trust. Essentially observing specificity (simultaneity) in constant becoming.
The production of ⋮ is part of its mediation, where the narrative of influence may be speculated, and reflected upon in an epistemic way—whilst still speaking to the myths of artistic practice and site-specific parastructure in artistic production. In addition to its narrative function, the simultaneity mark ⋮ might help to visualise multiple, contradictory ideas and provoke scepticism about the hierarchy of a left-to-right reading system. Overall, the scope of establishing a platform for long-term exchange is of substantial interest in light of the historical and complex migratory entanglements and converging geopolitical dynamics; a matrix housing multiple simultaneities.
⋮ is developed by Andrea Veselá and Martin Huber in exchange with Elian Stefa, Fabio Toska, Nita Zeqiri, Fitore Isufi Shukriu, Lisa Britzger, Rosa Luckow and Tesa Kabashi. The project is supported by Akademieverein München, BBK Bayern, Goethe Zentrum Tirana and Goethe Zentrum Prishtina. Participants: Laureta Hajrullahu, Martin Huber, Rosa Luckow, Xhulian Millaj, Elsaida Musiq, Elsamina Musiq, Ludwig Neumayr, Hana Qena, Somer Şpat and Andrea Veselá. Program: Artjom Astrov, Sezgin Boynik, Tesa Kabashi, luxxuryproblems, Klodiana Millona, Tevfik Rada, rosi, rosi96, Manuel Sékou and Endi Tupja. Website and design by Levin Jaensch, Nicolas Marino, Nikolai Rusu. Code by Severin Brunhuber. Documentation by Ludwig Neumayr. Albanian translation by Endi Tupja.
[1] The term originates from the Ancient Greek: élleipsis meaning “leave out”.
[2] With the invented application he suggests for this mark, Samuel R. Delany proposed an impossibility: that the reader take in two or more actions in the English language’s typical left-to-right reading order, but, in recognising the mark separating these actions, understand that they occur in perfect sync with one another, and not side-by-side in a narrative timeline.
