u.polis minimal commons: Minimal Commons_Public Library & Art Gallery_Joana Dhiamanti

Mine Peza Study Area
( click to see video of the area)

Photography of the Area

Panoramic View of the Mihal Duro-Kont Urani Streets Intersection

Interviews with the actors.

Q_Phenomena - Joana Dhiamanti

Q_Phenomena - Saimir Kristo

Profile Creation - Saimir Kristo

Lost Memories

Alban is a 16 year old teenager that is attending Qemal Stafa high school.

He lives with his parents and his two grandparents.

He doesn’t have any brothers or sisters. He is only child.

Alban has a normal height for his age, he has brown hair and brown eyes and his way of dressing is very different from the other boys in his age due to his very old-fashioned and conservative clothes.

His interests also differ from the ones of a typical teenager .

He doesn’t like football, basketball or any other sport. He doesn’t go out often and don’t like to drink or smoke. He has only one hobby.

His hobby is to collect old family photos that are taken in the communism era but also pictures from Tirana from different celebrations or fests and order then in his old and dusty picture album.

He doesn’t like to watch any tv show or program someone at his age would like to watch.

He doesn’t like soap operas, reality shows or documentaries about nature and space.

Alban only likes historical documentaries about Tirana and Albania

His favourite TV Show is “Histori me zhurmues” in Klan TV.

This particular TV Show makes him thing again about all the stories his grandparent describes to him, being nostalgic and wishes to live during communism again.

His grandfather Kujtim , was a lieutenant in the Albanian army during communism and his grandmother Liria, was chief secretary of the Work Party in Tirana.

Both of them are now living in retirement with their children and their grandson.

His family had a well-respected and important social status for that time.

After the fall of communism in 1990 his grandparents lost their jobs and their prestigious social status was devastated from the developments of that era.

They were obliged to leave their original home property and to move in a pre-fabricated social housing unit in a small 2 bedroom apartment.

With communism gone and 5 people that needed to go on with Albania’s new development situation, their family decided to leave everything behind and start all over.

Nowdays his father Skender works as an accountant for the public sector and his mother Loreta is an employee in a local store with minimum wage.

They both struggle to provide the necessary goods for living to the family.

Watching his family’s current situation and recalling all the stories his grandfather told him about his family status, rise and downfall he feels anger inside him and wants to regain back the lost status.

Recently he felt the need to do something so his family can take everything back. He wishes he could turn back time and change it everything all over again.

When he comes back from school to his house he passes through a little square between blocks near Kavaja and Durresi street where his old family house is still located.

It’s old faded appearance with all the modifications being made on the building’s fasade transformed it into a different building than the one in his album’s pictures.

He wishes his family could take back their original property and restore it to it’s original values.

He looks at it for minutes, sometimes whole hours and tries to bring to himself back all the lost memories, all the memories he had so much heard about, his grandfather’s memories, the memories he never had a chance to make them his own.

Scenario

It was a cloudy Friday noon, school was over for the week just in time for lunch and Alban was headed home.

He decided to take the least short route to go there and instead of cutting directly to Kavaja Street he started walking up Durres Street going closer and closer to Skanderberg Square.

The more he was walking his speed was going up and he was feeling more and more confident as he was approaching the big city center square, but that seemed not to be his final destination even if he was a still far from it.

Suddenly, it looked like his itinerary had just changed and he took a quick right turn just after the Ministry of Education into the paths of Tirana’s tiny historic neighborhoods.

His feelings inside him changed in the flip of a second, so drastically from all that confidence now the only thing he could just feel was fear.

Cold sweat was all over his body, his shirt was already wet and he could even feel this chill to all of his bones.

Walking slowly now, sneeking a peak around looking the old traditional houses of Tirana, some of them keeping their original function some others being transformed to traditional restaurants and coffee shops , he managed to regain back his strength and fill his lungs with the leftover smoky air of the city.

Ending this small path he was walking he already started to sense the uniqueness of that particular land.

Trying to look as far as he could, he was almost able to reach the very end in the western part of the tiny square he was infront of.

He turned his head a bit and what he could see was a maze, a human labyrinth created to keep him there as much as they wanted to, not because he was willing to stay there but cause they were ordering him to.

People walking up and down, right or left with their heads straight, they looked like horses in some race competing for big prizes. No matter what they would do ,or how fast they could run their loss was certain. They had a superior opponent or maybe opponents, so many cars suffocating the space, making it lose every molecule of life left on it. Enormous blocks of concrete were the limits of the race track and he felt like he could hear the angry crowd shouting behind him.

He was feeling a little strange, he wanted to lend his hand somewhere and rest it a bit and when he did that his hand touched an electric pole he had near him.

This old electric pole,is almost 50 years old he thought , so many memories from only a heartless piece of metal. With all the cables going out and inside of it probably this metallic tube was the only common thing left that these people had with each other.

Nothing connects people like before, individualism is the essential element of this modern capitalism. Nothing to offer but only to take, nothing to share but only to exploit.

We are living in a society full of greed and envy sins that are among people , dominating them, controlling their will and their actions.

Just infront of his fake reflections of democracy where written on posters and the walls of the headquarters of a political party made by people that lust only power and money.

The remains of this city were struggling with the gluttony of the powerfull ones.

The ones that could do anything to protect their interest and not public interest.

Not liking that particular image he turned his head right , to a small and tiny alley that not much time ago, just 1 month ago he remembered it to be wider and bigger.

“Even the streets of this city are narrowing “ he said under his teeth, just like this society’s mind and thought. Their will to judge and decide what is best for them and their fellow citizens.

Old Tirana the one that his grandfather told him so much about it , was dominated from the natural elements surrounding the city. The big mountain of Dajti, Lana River, it’s characteristic topography.

Now what really dominates it is the enormous height of the multi-floor apartment units.

Looking at those big masses of concrete he started spinning around himself and suddenly realized that all the love left in the city was gone, what was left in people’s hearts was just concrete, cold and solid concrete.

He didn’t knew how much time had passed , but he didn’t cared he wanted to stay as long as he could there , he knew what was keeping him there, the memory he never had of that place, only old stories wrapped in plastic pages closed with two surfaces of leather. This memory album.

But not know, not every time he was visiting this place, where he should be every day, waking up in the morning, resting in the noon and sleeping in the night.

His old family house was there, or what was left of it.

The damaged fasade remembered nothing from how it looked like in the old family photos.

The additions in the structure or paints in the exterior was an other sign of vandalism, an intellectual vandalism in his property. Probably some gipsies used his house as temporary shelter, hecouldn’t know for sure. He angry , he wanted to do something to change it as long as we was looking at the old traditional building in Mihal Duri street. He knew he couldn’t at least not yet.

He decided to change the view in his head and started moving towards the center of that tiny square, so exposed and protected in the same time , who could ever thought that the cars would be his ally .

Cold machines were his iron armor in this battlefield hiding among them as long as they were parked there.

He didn’t knew for how long he was there , he was just looking around trying to find hope somewhere, hope that something would change. So focused and absorbed in his quest for hope that everything silenced , every sound muted , the only thing he could hear was the sound of the leaves falling in the dirty roads.

Everything turned black and white, colourless , his senses were falling apart. He was trying to feel something , to sense what was close to him , to hear a human voice , he could just smell, he could just smell death, not only from the funeral services office but from the meaningless things he was left to live for.

He was in a dream or he was not ?

His damaged vision blured and a strong hit brought him back in reality, someone had falled into him , all the lost senses came back , he could hear a lot of voices now chatting and singing loudly drinking their coffee in their small “Eden” their so called “ reality”.

He was sure he didn’t wanted to leave in “their reality”, he wanted something totally different

He had a feeling that no one could share the same emotions with him, he was alone.

People might been moving in the small square , cars also running for their amazing race. Nothing made sense to him. He knew what he was looking for , what was his desire.

He wanted his legacy back, he wanted to leave nothing behind.

What his family was obliged to leave behind he wanted to have it back.

He searched deep into him , into the core of his soul to find something to make him strong.

So strong that he could overcome all the obstacles and reach his goal.

This wasn’t about his house, the bricks, the door, the windows, this was about what should’ve been changed, what should have been different.

He had to stand up for his name and he had his pride to guide him through.

Unmeet Needs

Symbolic Capital

Motivation

Triggers

Integration

Freedom

Truth

Peace

balance

Passion

Belief

Consolidation

Socialism

Memories

Emotions

Price

Legacy

Revenge

City

Death

Reanimation

Interest

Profile Creation - Joana Dhiamanti

Annia is an ordinary girl in an ordinary city. Or not ?

She lives in Tirana , a really interesting city due to all the changes in this city the last 20 years. To what this city was before , what happened 20 years ago , what is this city today and what will be in the next years to come.

Annia wakes up in the morning and directly starts preparing her small niece for school. After preparing her and taking her to the elementary school, she goes to her favourite caffee near where she lives and drinks a cup of hot black coffee and take off to go to her university.

After a full day of classes and things to do , ending her academic day she heads off back home but in the way she meets her friends in the same coffee she was the early morning. After some minutes of talking and enjoying life her sister with her niece pass by talking to each other.

She decides to join them and finally to go home, with a small piece of road to walk to they started to talk about their day today.

Having the attention around her is something that makes Annia happy and having her niece’s respect to her makes Annia way more happier than anything else in the world.

Annia is a very active young woman, she is a member of the Youth Forum and she is very sensitive about the weak groups of the community.

She collects food and clothes for the people in need.

As an active member of many environmental organizations she is the spirit of the group.

Really energetic and passionate to change the world, sensitive and pragmatic , ready to take big decisions and responsibilities, adventures and with many potentials . She really loves her country always tries to stand up for the good and right things in life.

She wants always to differ from others , this is a reason why she designs her own clothes, to express with her own unique way and leave her mark to anything that she does.

She participates with some other colleagues of her to an alternative studio that tries to colour the fasades of buildings giving them a different image and feeling.

She lives nearby the area , in small villa across the street of the Ministry of Education where her sister lives.

In the first floor this experimental alternative studio is located , she with her sister and her niece live in the second floor.

SCENARIO

Riding her bicycle from the Lana River cutting through the streets and the alleys passing the Cam Market entering the small square between Durres and Kavaja Street.

She noticed the gipsies selling used items like clothes , toys and other household equipment her heart shrinked within a second and she felt all the pain and hurt that those people face everyday, they are exiles in their own land in their own country.

Old buildings behind them creating a dramatic background in the area giving different images .

All that history that is covered with blocks of concrete all this nature being oppressed by high floor apartments.

Thinking what she can to do make this all better , how to change they way people move in the open spaces of the city, how cars use speed to frighten people or how people use their cars to block views and walking passages.

Stainding in the street corner with her bicycle among her hands started thinking about all the good things in life and everything that is making her happy.

Her friends, what she does, her sister, everything that u don’t expect from life and everything that surprises you and makes you feel like you never felt before.

Full of dreams and hopes, she started looking all the small parts of green that were hiding and poping out in the same time they seemed like opportunities that are ready for you to grab them and take advantage of them.

After all that thinking and dreaming she took the small path to head her back home , meet her sister and her beloved niece and spend some time together.

UNMEET NEEDS

-quality

-idea/vision

-diversity

-life

-colours

-potencial to express

SYMBOLIC CAPITAL

-freedom

-enviromental sensibility

-pluralism

-chance to change