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Fragments IWhere stories cut across the land

Vangjush Vellahu - Fragments I
This artist's book derives from a series of videos documenting the present situation of six unrecognized Republics on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Vellahu collects the collective memories of people and lands which have been affected by years of war and by the politics of borders.
This is not an artist's book about borders. Rather, it is an artist's book about overcoming the influence of politics on the land within the borders of unrecognized or semi-recognized states. It is a document of the fragmented symptoms of the "Bosnian pot" character of governance, in which all components simultaneously complement and eliminate each other. This unsettling principle of governance, in which elements unable to withstand the pressure collapse, while those that are more powerful survive (and are subsequently absorbed within the system), has been known for many centuries. By not taking sides, what this book highlights, from a bird's-eye view, are the contrasts and conflicts provoked by contemporary attempts at preserving a semblance of safety within those borders. Unfortunately, many of these attempts did, and continue to, constitute crimes.
Much more than a mere cinematographic idea, Fragments I is a series of video documents detailing a journey through specific socio-political pulsars: The Republic of Abkhazia, a state of limited recognition; Varosha, a silent town in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey; through the Field of Blackbirds in the Republic of Kosovo, a state of limited recognition; at the edge of the Tskhinvali region of the Republic of South Ossetia, a partially recognized state; in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic or the Republic of Artsakh, a state unrecognized by any sovereign state; and in Transnistria, or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, a self-proclaimed, non-recognized, autonomous territorial unit with a special legal status.
Vangjush Vellahu (born 1987 in Pogradec, Albania, lives and works in Berlin) is a visual artist working with video, prints, objects and archives with the focus on different forms of storytelling particular to specific communities; exploring how collective memories of authoritarian regimes are produced and remembered by communities affected by them. His works intertwine urban histories of entities that from an ideological and political stand point remain on the margins of recognition. His travels often take a shape of journal-like reconfigurations that attempt at re-defining the popular understanding of what borders, territories or geographies represent today. Since 2014 he is part of a local group of emerging young artists – Nucleu 0000 in Bucharest, that tries to coagulate an artistic organization as a response to the lack of cultural finance.
Edited by Jasmina Metwaly and Joerg Franzbecker.

Graphic design: Vangjush Vellahu.

 
published in November 2019
English edition
15 x 22 cm (softcover)
138 pages (color ill.)
 
15.00
 
ISBN : 978-3-943620-98-6
EAN : 9783943620986
 
in stock


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