{"id":61802,"date":"2021-03-17T16:58:31","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T15:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kosovotwopointzero.com\/?p=61802"},"modified":"2021-03-19T13:15:51","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T12:15:51","slug":"between-life-and-death-artists-articulate-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.kosovotwopointzero.com\/en\/between-life-and-death-artists-articulate-the-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Between life and death, artists articulate the pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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With COVID-19 in our lives, artists express what others cannot.<\/b><\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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How to articulate the sudden thirst for life, the fear of death, the insanity of another day awaiting for news of tomorrow when tomorrow is uncertain? How to articulate the daily acts we cope with between dying and living?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

When we could not articulate any of that, we looked to those who could and tried: Artists. Their music, their writing, their painting, their poetry, their voice. Their work was and continues to be healing, soothing, cathartic, and at times as painful as the reality we live in. But isn\u2019t that what we look for in art? Answers. Questions. An expression we struggle to find in ourselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Since the COVID-19 pandemic\u2019s arrival in Kosovo, artists have struggled too, to stay afloat. With galleries, exhibitions and cultural events canceled in Kosovo and abroad, international exhibitions and artistic programs were either off the table, postponed, annulled, or reshaped into a virtual sphere that just isn\u2019t the same. While some cultural projects moved on against all odds, adapting to pandemic times, artists too were cut off from their income, of contact with loved ones, of the necessary exchange with others that feeds work. That feeds art.<\/span><\/p>

In the midst of this life and death scenario painted over our heads, which we have now incorporated into our daily life as a normal aspect of the everyday, some artists turned to their art to make sense of the reality \u2014 or the delusion \u2014 they found themselves in. Reviving past traumas, confronting the possibility of death, surviving the everyday, finding life in the small details, coping with loneliness in the monotony of lockdown, choosing life over survival, are some of the themes that artists put into their work over the past year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

K2.0 spoke to five artists \u2014 musician Liburn Jupolli, poet Nora Prekazi, painter Rron Qena and contemporary artists Driton Selmani and Doruntina Kastrati \u2014 about what this year has been like, with some of the artwork produced since March 2020 that articulates the crisis and hints of life inside the pandemic.
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Longing with Liburn Jupolli

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COVID-19 quarantine caught Liburn Jupolli, one of Kosovo\u2019s most progressive musicians, in France, where he was working on the music for a play based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky\u2019s \u201cThe Dream of a Ridiculous Man,\u201d featuring Arben Bajraktari and Dennis Lavant under the direction of Simon Pitaqaj.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In the play itself, written in 1877, C\u00e9sar Award nominee Lavant, has a line about the plagues in human history, to which he added coronavirus at the premiere in Paris in 2020, getting a laugh out of the audience, while there was still an audience. \u201cIt was a crazy cathartic use of the situation,\u201d says Jupolli at a cafe in Prishtina one year later, \u201cnobody knew yet what was going on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Lockdown arrived in France on March 16, with initial closings of schools and universities. It was the beginning of more than two long months stuck in Paris for Jupolli, at a friend’s apartment, while his dog and girlfriend were thousands of kilometers away in Prishtina. \u201cIt was almost three months of living in a laptop,\u201d he says, while recollecting the memories of a 24\/7 virtual life.<\/span><\/p>

The pandemic\u2019s quarantines and strict traveling regimes across the European continent caught many by surprise, despite the warnings coming from the East. Couples and both given and chosen families were suddenly separated, with airplanes parked and borders closed down. Jupolli spent two months in France, and another bit of isolation in Switzerland before finally making it to Kosovo.<\/span><\/p>

Unlike Dostoyevsky\u2019s drama that he put music to, which narrates the tale of a man who loses belief in the world\u2019s value and plans to end his life, a lockdown far away from his Kosovar home pushed Jupolli into an unbeatable sense of longing, a longing out of love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI had never in my life missed Kosovo as much as I missed Kosovo during these three months,\u201d he says now.<\/span><\/p>

Jupolli experienced a very strict lockdown in France, with numbered walks to the grocery store, and then a more relaxed time in Switzerland where he was hosted by an Albanian family friend, in a home in the countryside.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cFor me it\u2019s been a time for growth, for acceptance, reorganization and reflection, for not just surviving but putting things into perspective for the future.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Baffled by the news of death and the reduction of the pandemic to numbers during those first months of 2020, Jupolli speaks of an overwhelming sadness that is hard to face through a musical piece he has not yet dared to write. But he emphasizes the necessity of giving a humanistic response on an artistic level to what this historical event has brought us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The musician, known for his love of experimentation and innovation, sees this time as an opportunity to contribute to what he describes as \u201ca chance to test the future.\u201d In art, that is, in his words, \u201can opportunity to contribute to this change in the creative industry while also keeping our humanity alive within this new system.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

This has been a very hectic year for Jupolli, with plenty of work on the books, and collaborations with other artists. But while still away from his loved ones during a period when nobody really knew how long the quarantine was going to last; stranded in Paris and Switzerland and armed only with a laptop to channel his creativity, Jupolli\u2019s most personal creations during this time as a COVID-refugee turned out to be love songs for his partner. A human act after all, if not the most human act. \u201cFor me, all this stemmed from love for my people, love for life.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sea Ride (draft)<\/h5>\n