Petrit Halilaj. The Lightning
With ethnic conflict as the backdrop, Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986, Kostërcc) has returned to the Kosovar town where he grew up in an attempt to revive its history, particularly through the spoken memories of the townspeople. His play Shkrepëtima brings together a cast of local ocarina players with professional actors and dancers, thus reviving Runik’s House of Culture, until recently used as a dump.
Shkrepëtima (The Lightning) is the title of Petrit Halilaj’s recently initiated play project in Runik, the Kosovar town where he grew up. Fleeing the ethnic conflict that took place in Kosovo between 1998–99, Halilaj has since then lived in Italy and Berlin, where he is currently based. He often works with elements of his own biography in an attempt to rebuild a sense of identity, not only for himself but his country as well, whose status is not yet fully accepted by the European community. As a result of the war and the following diplomatic imbroglio, most of the official history of the region has been lost. Returning again and again to a town whose only vestige of the past is its name, Halilaj has slowly unearthed Runik’s past through the spoken memories of its inhabitants, gleaning and collecting information with each new visit. Staged in and around the cultural center recently brought back to life, Shkrepëtima is a long-term project meant to revive Runik’s cultural past and allow people from both ethnical backgrounds to build a new community. It was launched in early July with a performance in four acts featuring a cast of fifteen ocarina players from the local community, along with ten actors and dancers from Kosovo’s theater and ballet world. Followed by an exhibition at the Zentrum Paul Klee (July–August 2018), it will culminate at the end of October with an exhibition at the Fondazione Merz in Turin, which awarded Halilaj with the Mario Merz Prize in 2017. ELISE LAMMER: Runik already was the topic of your show at the New Museum in New York in September 2017, after you discovered it was the site of one of the earliest Neolithic settlements in the region, and home to the ocarina, the oldest musical instrument ever discovered in the Balkans. You’ve just spent months cleaning and rebuilding Runik’s former House of Culture and interviewing people about their recollection of a building that once housed a library containing about 7,000 books, a theater, and the farmers’ cooperative. The restored space was the main character, as well as the setting, of a bombastic performance in which the spirits inhabiting this old building were the voices restoring the history of your hometown. Why did you pick this place, and what was this play about? PETRIT HALILAJ: I see the play as the event marking the beginning of long-term and self-sustaining project. The House of Culture is located in the center of Runik, in the middle of the main square. Until last March, it was used as a dump; people would basically use it to throw their trash and pee. It was part of a program launched by the then Yugoslavian government in the late 1940s to promote culture in the countryside, in smaller towns and villages. There were plans for over 4,000 such centers throughout the country. Some of them, with varying degrees of involvement from the local community, became hugely successful. They played an important role in helping people build a sense of community after World War II, while promoting cultural and social improvement. In Runik alone, concerts and events were regularly sold out, which is incredible for such a small town. At some point the local acting troupe was so successful that it started touring the entire country. During Serbia’s rule over Kosovo, Slobodan Miloševic banned all cultural initiatives and the House of Culture was abandoned and never used again. After the war, people were mostly concerned with their survival. Many were left homeless and had to care for the most urgent matters. In a way, the trauma the war left, combined with a rather chaotic reconstruction scheme, led the population to become suspicious of their own community. As a multiethnic city, any initiative would have to involve both communities (Serbians and Albanians), and for some years after the conflict, both
were still killing each other. Despite the war being officially over, the wound remained open for a long time.
Since I had no direct memories of the House of Culture, I started interviewing former actors, going to their houses, asking them about the plays that had once been performed. We talked for hours. Twelve plays seemed to stand out, so I decided to use and rework some fragments to write the script of Shkrepëtima, which is about the past, present and future of Runik.
The play was only performed once, on July 7 in Runik. Most of the art world probably missed it. Can you talk more about the story and scenography, tell us what it is about?
The play was really conceived for the people of Runik and was only the starting point of a three-part project between Kosovo, Switzerland and Italy. While working on the play, I documented the process while collecting objects and ephemera. I also made drawings on some archival documents from the House of Culture I discovered during my research period, intending to show them at the Zentrum Paul Klee and the Fondazione Merz, as elements documenting the concept behind the performance. Shkrepëtima is divided into three acts, where the first act deals with the distant past of Runik, which was one of the earliest Neolithic settlements in the region. Archaeological digs in 1968 and 1983 uncovered part of Kosovo’s most significant prehistoric artifacts, including the Runik Ocarina, which plays a leading role in the narrative. We follow the dreams of a boy who falls asleep in a bed made of the remains of the cultural center. The boy, who remains asleep during the entire play, serves as the narrative thread running throughout. The building does not only shelter the boy, it slowly impacts the story, while transforming his subconscious to direct the destiny of the boy and his town.
The Runik Ocarina has played an important role in Kosovars’ attempt to grasp and redefine a sense of national identity. During the war it was “loaned” to the Natural History Museum in Belgrade and never returned. The play seems to address, though very poetically, the missing of cultural treasures. How was this conveyed in Shkrepëtima?
The ocarina is the element connecting past and present in the play and, more generally, the country. At some point, the librarian, another key character, tries to awaken the boy by playing the ocarina. More players join, forming a chorus of fifteen musicians playing the instruments we crafted during a workshop organized at the local school in collaboration with the Fondazione Merz Education Department. Instead of waking the boy, the ocarina players awaken the building, which is brought to life and starts communicating with them and the spectators. There is a growing awareness of displaced cultural treasures, and I’m hoping that the play will contribute to our placing value on Runik’s cultural heritage. What happens after the House of Culture comes alive? The second act deals with the more recent history of Runik and somewhat traces a biography of the House of Culture through the anecdotes and scripts I collected. The first fragment is about a mother and her daughter, who is in love with the wrong man. He isn’t the husband who was assigned to her, a typical scenario of Kosovar patriarchal society, where women are still considered only as mothers and homemakers. The second fragment tells the story of a female teacher who gets punished for trying to educate women while teaching them the alphabet. The third is about a woman who transforms herself into a man in order to avoid a forced marriage as she awaits the return of the man she loves. The fourth and last fragment takes place during a wedding and is about Hakmarrja, an Albanian tradition – still ongoing for a portion of the population – that consists of blood revenge over questions of honor. Despite the dramatic angle of the four fragments, each story has a surprise twist, and the play is concluded on a positive note. Finally the boy awakes in what looks like a nest made with all the props used during the play, and he realizes that his dreams weren’t only illusions. The July performance ended with a grande finale by ANDRRA, a Kosovar singer born in Germany with whom I worked on the soundtrack.
You left Berlin and spent a lot of time in Runik for this project. Now that the House of Culture is back to life and the community revitalized, what’s next?
The goal was to start a process of renewal; it was important to include all layers of history, as well as people of different generations and ethnic backgrounds. I needed a profound understanding of what was at stake. I think I brought in a structure, so that the group of people with whom I worked can autonomously produce a similar event next year. Through the exhibitions in Bern and Turin, I have also been able to provide an awareness of the many cultural and political aspects confronting the region, and I have realized how many people are interested in keeping this place alive. I’m convinced that the knowledge we built together is here to stay. Runik has such a rich historical and cultural history that there is enough material to actually build a museum! Elise Lammer is curator at SALTS, Birsfelden, Switzerland. She is based in Basel and Berlin.