Pristina is the city that this year will host – from 22 July to 30 October – the 14th edition of Manifesta, the nomadic biennial of contemporary art founded and directed by Hedwig Fijen. A hundred days of events, performances, workshops and art born with the idea of allow citizens to recover the city’s abandoned public spaces. As happened in the two previous editions of Palermo (2018) and Marseille (2020), also on the Kosovar capital the Biennale commissioned a preliminary urban planning analysis to an architectural firm, the CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and involved a network of professionals to develop interventions with medium and long-term results. The capital of Kosovo was chosen “for the geographical and geopolitical importance of the Balkans in relation to the recent history of Europe and its future”. A symbolic place from which to observe and reflect on the socio-political changes in Europe today.
Manifesta14’s main ambition is that of strengthen Kosovo’s cultural networks. As stated in a press release “Manifesta will give life to collaborative projects that strengthen the infrastructure of local culture: one of the ways it aims to do this is to create, with and for the local community, production spaces for art professionals in the former Hivzi Syleimani Library, which has a large garden now inaccessible to the public, and in the former Brick Factory, one of the largest post-industrial sites in the city“. On the occasion of the event, in fact, residents, designers, architecture students and artists will be involved to offer insights and ideas on how to transform the city’s abandoned public spaces into vital hubs for the community. In addition to the Library and the former factory, also the historian Grand Hotel Prishtinaa meeting point during the Yugoslav era, will host art installations and debates.
Finally, the Green Corridor, an important environmental intervention part of a larger urban investment, which will transform a section of the old Prishtina-Belgrade railway into a green space with trees, plants and a pedestrian path that will involve the local community. How? It will be the task of the citizens together with the Municipality, in the future, to take care of it. Galleries, art centers, new gastronomic points, green ideas, fashion and design, Prishtina in recent years, despite the pandemic, has not stopped for a moment. In gallerywhat to see and do during a weekend in the city.
Source: Vanity Fair