An  Albanian in Cochin

Fort Cochin ('Kochi' in Malayalam) lies near the mouth of a saline lagoon on the Malabar Coast in Kerala on the western side of India. Every 2 years it hosts the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The brainchild of the artist Bose Krishnamachari, this exhibition of art by leading Indian and international contemporary artists makes use of the fabulous interiors of Kochi's magnificent heritage buildings to display the exhibits. The largest venue, which contains the majority of the works is Aspinwall House, the former headquarters of a British trading firm.

This year (2014) the artists include, in addition to leading Indian artists, such well-known names as: Anish Kapoor, Mona Hatoum, Yoko Ono, and William Kentridge. Amongst the  best works on show is a video by the Albanian born artist Adrian PACI.

Paci was born in the Albanian city of Shkoder (Scutari) in 1969. He studied in Tirana along with the artist Edi Rama, who is currently Albania's prime minister. In the 1990s, Paci moved to Italy. He now lives and works in Milan. He was aged 22 when Albania's hard-line, isolationist, Stalinist regime suddenly crumbled in the very early 1990s. Therefore, he lived throughout his childhood and early adulthood under the repressive conditions imposed firts by Albania's dictator Enver Hoxha, and then by his successor Ramiz Alia. I felt that the influence of his experiences of those times are to some extent expressed in his video The Column.

Paci's video lasts about 25 minutes. It begins in a marble quarry in China. A large piece of marble is being hewn carefully from the bed-rock. The ne4xt scene begins with shots of cranes at a dock side.   The rectanguloid piece of marble form the quarry is carefully lowered into the hold of a long ocean-going freighter vessel. This boat sets off for Europe from China. Throughout the voyage, a small team of Chinese sculptors meticulously transform the lump of stone into a classical column with an elaborately decorative capital. Paci's film captures  details of this process: the actual carving as well as the expressions on the sculptors' faces. The sculptors' teamwork and dedication to the task is well portrayed. In addition, Paci focusses on details of the ship, the sea, and the men's activities such as cooking, relaxing, and smoking. For example, Paci shows us a sculptor popping a piece of gum into his mouth whilst smoking a squashed cigarette. In anothe short sequence, we see a man chopping cabbage in prepariation for a meal. This is inserted between scenes showing the men cutting the marble. Features such as these in addition to shots of the battered ship's hull and water rushing past the ship's exterior heighten the excitement of this visually intriguing film. Paci captures the textures of human activity and also of inanimate objects both beautifully and most sensitively.  This film is far more than a documentary; it is a moving work of art. There is no soundtrack apart from the actual sounds of the men working and their surroundings.

Eventually, the column is finished. The hold of the freighter, which has up to now been open to the sky, is closed with slatted metal shutters.  The final scene  of the film shows lines of light that have filtered through gaps and holes in the shutters moving slowly along the the somewhat 'kitschy' but perfectly made column and its capital.

Paci's film , which I considered to be little short of perfect, made me reflect on its possible relationships with his native land Albania.

The film, The Column, is interesting as a work of art not only because it is in itself a brilliant creation but also because it follows the creation of a work of art, the column and its capital. The film portrays a heroic struggle between man (the sculptors) and nature (the stone block). Such heroic struggles bring to my mind the image that the former Stalist Communist regime of Albania used to enjoy portraying: little Albania, like David, versus the rest of the world, Goliath. 

Paci would have been a small child when Albania broke with its ally the Peoples' Republic of China in the early 1970s. While I watched his film, I was impressed by the intense concentration and single-mindedness of the Chines sculptors. I was reminded of Ismail Kadare's novel The Concert in which the story of Albania's fracture with China unfolds. I wondered whether Paci would have herad about the unusual single-mindedness of the Chines who had helped to develop his native land. Did this, by any chance, affect his portrayal of the Chines sculptors?

The project itself - the carving of a rather ridiculous column at sea - amused me. I realise that it must have been a commission and could see the practicality of carving the stone while it was in transit, but nevertheless it intrigued me. Surrounded by the empty ocean without anything but the empty horizon to be seen, the monolithic project being executed by heroic and intensely serious workers represente, for me atleast, a metaphor of the Albania of Enver Hoxha - the metaphor of a self-sufficient state attempting live and function in complete isolation from the rest of the world.

I am very pleased that I had the chance to view Paci's visually engrossing and entirely fascinating work several times over and in such a pleasant environment as is afforded by the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which will be reincarnated next in December 2016.

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An artist in Albania

I have just finished reading Edith and I , a book written by Elizabeth Gowing. I have reviewed it on https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/733589531 . It is about the life of Miss Mary Edith Durham (1863-1944), and concentrates on her visits to the area of the Balkans that is now the Republic of Kosovo. Miss Durham is known affectionately by modern Albanians, whose cause  she championed before and after the First World War, as Mbretëresha e Malësoreve  (the 'Queen of the Mountains'). 

Until I read Gowing's book, and then looked up Durham on Wikipedia, I had not realised that Miss Durham had been trained as an artist and illustrator long before she embarked on her travels to the southern Balkans. Long ago, I acquired an early edition of Durham's book entitled High Albania. It is a brilliantly written account of her travels in the rugged mountains of northern Albania  and neighbouring Kosovo and of the people whom she met there. 

I took a fresh look at my copy of High Albania, and realised that its author was indeed a fine illustrator. The rest of this article is dedicated to presenting a few examples of Durham's hand-drawn illustrations in her book. Her attention to detail was marvellous, as was her ability to capture the 'atmosphere' of a place. Despite the presence of her own photographs in her book, it is the drawings that help to make it really special.

Of this picture, Miss Durham wrote, "To study head tufts one must go to church festivals. Only then are a number seen uncovered."

The two pictures shown above are of anthropological and/or ethnographic interest. It is not surprising to learn that Miss Durham's inherent ability to observe the characteristics of people and to report on them scientifically was recognised by the Royal Anthropological Institute (of Great Britain & Ireland) who appointed her a Fellow of it. The next 2 pictures illustrate Durham's skills in capturing both great detail and also the genreal  'atmosphere' of places that she visited.

The first of these two shows the interior of a house in Skreli, in the northern highlands of Albania. The crosses drawn on the wall next to the hearth indicate that the house was home to some of the many Albanian Roman Catholics who lived in the area. The second of these, the kavajee or coffee-maker, shows him holding the jezva, in which Turkish-style coffee is brewed, in one hand and the cup into which it will be served in the other.  The next picture shows Durham's skill in depicting architecture.

The drawing above, although very competent must have been drawn at speed, as the accompanying text, which I have copied, suggests. It shows a couple of kulle or fortified tower residences that are not only typical of the lands inhabited by Albanians but can also be found in the Mani Peninsular that projects from the southern Peloponnese (see my picture below). 

As Gowing's book relates much about Durham' s visits to Kosovo, I have decided to include some of the pictures from High Albania that were drawn whilst Edith was there. Here is one showing a Serbian woman from Ipek carrying a cradle on her back:

And, here is another one showing two of the fine frescoes inside the Serbian monastery at Gračanica ( Graçanicë), not far from the Kosovan capital as well as the site of the Battle of Kosovo Polje where the Serbs were narrowly defeated by the Ottoman army on the 15th June 1389. 

Today, visiting the monastery is not as simple as it was when I visited in 1990 (see my recently published book about Yugoslavia Scrabble with Slivovitz - click here ). When Elizabeth Gowing visited it, the Serbian monasteries in Kosovo had become like tiny rocks in a vast sea of Albanians. Surrounded by razor wire fences and guarded by heavily armed militia to protect these islets of  Serbian culture from the Albanians, who rightly or wrongly lose little love for the Serbs, entry to them is subject to intensive identity checking and might be denied. The last of my examples of Durham's drawings brings us back to northern Albania, which is the main subject of High Albania. It shows an old man of Shoshi, which is somewhere north of Albania's River Drin that flows towards its mouth near to Shkodra.

I hope that this small sample of illustrations drawn by the intrepid  Edwardian traveller Mary Edith Durham serve to demonstrate her skills as an artist and illuminator.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED

IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: 

ALBANIA, KOSOVO, the BALKANS,

and TRAVEL,

then you need to read

"ALBANIA ON MY MIND"

by Adam Yamey.

This book is available on Amazon

&

by clicking HERE