Ditëlindja

My Birthday Celebration

Albania/USA, 2011, Colour, 31 min

In a small country in the western part of Balkan there are 800,000 bunkers. They are built during the reign of communist system in Albania. They are the symbols of totalitarian attitude and bring to our mind such concepts as: the War, the Enemy and the Fear. Through the act of organizing my 25th Birthday party inside the bunker, I want to face the oppressive symbol with deliberate awareness for the purpose of inverting its meaning ironically into a symbol of hospitality. Rather than having them as a burden I am trying to give bunkers utilitarian dimension. With this work I want to make visible how the old mentality lingers in many aspects of Albania’s contemporary life. The search process, finding the proper bunker for the party, seems like an archeological process of the present time.