T.I.C.A. – Tirana Institute of Contemporary Art is proud to announce the participating artists of its new residency program, T.I.C.A. AIRLAB 2012. As announced earlier this year, AIRLAB is a production oriented thematic Artist in Residency Program to be held during April-May and September-October of each year in Tirana. The theme of the AIRLAB for 2012 is Re-enactment as Artistic Strategy and the invited artists to attend the first period starting from April 1st are Vahida Ramujkic, Armando Lulaj, Astrit Ismaili.
VAHIDA RAMUJKIC
www.irational.org/vahida/; www.bbva.irational.org; www.rotorrr.org
Born in Yugoslavia (1973), lived in Spain (1998/2007), returned to Serbia (2008).
Among other, in 2001 with Laia Sadurní in Barcelona she founds Rotor Collective that will be active until 2006, initiating a series of explorations in public space, devising its own methods and strategies for learning through experience and creative practice balancing on the border between art, activism, and social studies. During traveling through ex-Yugoslav republics in 2006, she initiates Disputed Histories Library, collecting history text-books issued in different time periods in those regions, organizing a series of workshops comparing and analyzing opposed historic narratives as a long-term, ongoing research. In 2008 she initiates collaboration with Aviv Kruglanski with the project of Documentary Embroidery, a work in progress using embroidery rather than video or photography, as a technique for documenting reality. Their collaboration extends to other ongoing projects such as Microcultures, in collaboration with micro-organisms, where fermentation process is experimented in culinary, social and economic sense.
ARMANDO LULAJ
Born in 1980 in Tirana, Albania. Lives and works in Tirana. Writer of plays, texts on risk territory and film author, producer of conflict images, Armando Lulaj is a lucid and disrespectful analyst of the dispositive and mechanisms of power. He has no desire to vindicate the context of local belonging; rather, he is orientated toward accentuating the border between economical power, fictional democracy and social disparity in a global context. In 2003 he founded the Debatikcenter of Contemporary Art, a debate centre who wants to analyze the recent changes in contemporary society. Recently, Debatikcenter has become more of a centre for film production run by Armando and his sister Anola Titani. Armando Lulaj has participated in exhibitions such as: The Prague Biennial (2003, 2007), Tirana Biennial (2005), the Albanian Pavilion in the 52 Venice Biennial (2007), the 4th Gothenburg Biennale (2007), the 8th Baltic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland (2009), the 6th Berlin Biennial (2010).
ASTRIT ISMAILI
Born in 1991 in Prishtine, Kosova. His work is body oriented and performance based on photography, video, installation, fashion, contemporary theater and poetry. For Ismaili art is subject and object at the same time. He utilizes the male body to develop his own self-knowledge. He plays with gender, infamous superstars, clothing and mise-an-scéne to recreate moments or situations that happened in real life. The body is always treated like a commodity to be used and consumed or an icon to adore at safe distance and it is placed in familiar settings, though at the limits of our experience. Ismaili attempts to present the body as a symbol of receptivity, a meeting place between the self and the rest of the world, a communicative model in which information about his own experience is presented and reflected upon.
RE-ENACTMENT AS ARTISTIC STRATEGY
The strategy of re-enactment is an artistic approach that one encounters often in contemporary art. The idea of re-enactment one can say permeates to a certain extent the artistic operation all along the history of art, but a shift in perspective occurs in contemporary art: events are re-enacted not for the mere sake of commemorance, but for the relevance of the past event for the current situation. Furthermore, we can encounter re-enactments of not only historical events, but also of art works and actions done by other artists in the past, or even artists re-enacting their own work or actions. Thus one can say that through reaching back to historical events that have left a trace, or to historical circumstances that inspired creation of certain art works, artistic re-enactment is a way to question our present times through direct engagement not only of the artists but often of the audience as well.
T.I.C.A. – AIRLAB
The AIRLAB program is made possible through the generous support of the Network Partnership 3 – year grant of Princ Claus Culturfund. It consists of two residency periods per year. The residencies will be thematic and multidisciplinary, with a different theme to be explored every year. A yearly e-publication with artistic documentation and external text contributors to the program will accompany the program.
T.I.C.A. residency program is also supported by FAVA – Foundation for Visual Arts and the Austrian Embassy in Tirana.
Contact: Alketa Kurrizo, Program Coordinator; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; tel: 00355 682128881
Visiting address: Hekla Center, Rr. Abdyl Frasheri, Tirana, Albania
