Love.State.Kosovo
By: Albina Makolli October 2, 2013
There is very little interest for Kosovo in Western Europe, maybe even no interest at all. That is enough reason for Beatrice Fleischlin and Antje Schupp to drive to Kosovo, as an initiative for their project that addresses exclusion in Kosovo.They observed Kosovo’s complex, political and social occurrences through their personal and naïve Western lenses/perspective. They processed their experiences and impressions through a performance, together with two Kosovars, Astrit Ismaili (performance artist) and Labinot Rexhepi (dancer). Their play, “Love. State. Kosovo”, does not only mirror the group’s personal perspective, but ,with a wink, also addresses the issue of drawing and crossing boundaries in the field of artistic team play.
It’s not the first time that the Swiss author and performer Beatrice Fleischlin and the German director Antje Schupp are working together. Their last joint project was dedicated to love. This time, they focus on Kosovo, the youngest state in Europe, and the development processes that it’s been going through. “There is very little interest for Kosovo in Western Europe, maybe even no interest at all. The very name sounds so distant, as if one was talking about the moon. The name reminds of minefields, toothless elderly, and crisis. In the eyes of Western Europeans, Kosovo is a lost case. No one expects that ‘those down there’ will experience development any time soon. They don’t even have access to the coast. But once you have been there, you realize that there exists such a thing as a daily life, and people even posses cars. That’s when you realize how stuck you were in your notion about the unknown”. This is the starting point as described according to Fleischlin and Schupp. So, both performers went off to Kosovo in summer 2012 for their first research trip. A young country in every respect: The average age of Kosovo’s population is 27. In 2008, Kosovo declared independence. It’s independence, however, has been recognized by barely half of the UN’s member states.
They observed Kosovo’s complex, political and social occurrences through their personal and naive Western lenses. They found a country that has a very special relationship to Switzerland. They processed their experiences and impressions through a performance, together with two Kosovars, Astrit Ismaili (performance artist) and Labinot Rexhepi (dancer). Their play, “Love. State. Kosovo”, does not only mirror the group’s personal perspective, but, humorously, also addresses the issue of drawing and crossing boundaries in the field of artistic team play.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/75806112]
For more information, please visit: Zuercher Theater Spektakel here
Albina Makolli
Albina Makolli is a blog contributor. She fled Kosovo when she was four; she grew up in Germany. Albina received her under graduate degree in European studies, and then continued with a graduate program in Public Policy and Human Development at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance. Within the framework of her graduate program she specialized in Migration studies. Last summer (2012), Albina visited Kosovo for the purpose of conducting research for her Master thesis. The data that she gathered helped her to learn more about young Kosovars’ emigration plans and concerns about their country’s economic development. This summer she returned to Kosovo to work for the IOM and UNDP joint project 'Diaspora Engagement in Economic Development'. The purpose of the study is to facilitate and incentivise Diaspora investments in Kosovo.
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