[spectre] Kosovo 2

Mon Feb 28 12:27:55 CET 2005

(friends: vesa had tried to send this text a few weeks ago, but 
attached a broken word-file; here's the recovered text. ab)

From: "Vesa Sahatciu" <s_vesa at hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 17:12:00 +0000

Dear Andreas, here is the text.
The idea was to publish the text much sooner, early January.

Best,
Vesa Sahatciu

From: "vesa Sahatciu" <s_vesa at hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 15:34:54 +0000

I got this email address form Natasa Petresin, who is a good friend, 
and who read the text and suggested I send it to you.

Kind regards,
Vesa Sahatciu

Reaction to Mr. Kelmendi’s column in ‘Java’ 13 January 2005.

I have decided to write this text to my great grievance, since it is 
tacky business to write this kind of text. Yet, I cannot help it. I 
decided to write this text the moment I read the headlines of Mr. 
Migjen Kelmendi’s editorial in ‘Java’ on 31st of January, where he 
asks the question of whether our mediocre academicians have any sense 
of moral responsibility toward the published word. I barely read the 
body of the column. I couldn’t be bothered. I could detect the ever 
repeated names that we find in Mr. Kelmendi’s editorial: Mehment 
Kraja, Eqrem Basha, and this time there was Rexhep Qosja and 
president Rugova. I couldn’t care less for these names. I’d rather 
spend time pondering about what to wear, than to re-read an 
exasperated view of our decadent academicians, from a clearly 
decadent era, with outdated knowledge and notions of knowing. Since, 
to all of us, this is already common knowledge.  It is common 
knowledge that we have a whole body of intellectuals who cling merely 
to the title of their post, and the outdated romantic notions of THE
INTELECTUAL. In fact, for the lot of us, especially the young 
generation, to be given the title of the academician these days 
inside our borders, is to be crowned a mediocre fraud. Thus, for most 
of us youngsters this topic has simply been overcome.

‘Do our academicians know the difference
between the moral 
responsibility to the published word and its abuse, or am I asking 
too much from these people that they call -- ‘academicians’?’ This is 
the part of the headline text that I want to concentrate on. Because 
in fact, it is the question that I wanted to pose to Mr. Kelmendi not 
long ago in December 2004, when the exhibition The Muslim Mulliqi 
Prize was opened, and at the same time The Video Art Fest was being 
held. Since during this time, and after, neither events were 
mentioned in the weekly newspaper ‘Java’. Even though ‘Java’, which 
considers itself an alternative newspaper, has had its hands 
considerably deep in the cause of promoting domestic contemporary art 
and culture, and is also the host of the first supplement for 
contemporary art ‘Arta’. These two events furthermore, were of no 
little significance for the visual art scene here. They were two 
events that accumulated quite a number of established and 
establishing artists and art theoreticians from home and from around 
the world. But information on them, we are not even speaking of any 
kind of article or review, was totally held out. There was only one 
mention of the Video Art Fest in the 2004—2005 extended edition of 
Java, in the article of Sara Kelmendi, about which I will speak later 
in the text. Otherwise, it was as if these two events never took 
place. Now my question is, is it moral for a newspaper that deals 
with society, politics and culture, to hold out whole information on 
two not little significant arts events at home? Is it not immoral and 
irresponsible for someone who is trusted with the task of informing 
the public, to turn the other cheek, deliberately or not, and leave 
the public in the dark? Where is this professionalism and moralism 
for the published word that Mr. Kelmendi is asking from the people 
that he is brutally criticising? But let us take it easy for the 
moment. Since we are criticising Mr. Kelmendi for words never 
published. Let’s look at one article in which the Video Art Fest was 
mentioned. This is Sara Kelmendi’s article on the cultural events in 
2004, where two sentences are dedicated to the Video Art Fest. The 
writer begins the text by speaking of the failure of most cultural 
events in 2004, especially the overcrowded festivals and spectacles, 
and immediately places Video Art Fest in the group of mainstream, 
commercial music shows like Show Fest, and Video Fest, a festival 
dedicated to video clips, considering them all the same. This for me 
is the first and last proof that the writer hasn’t the essential 
understanding of video art as a genre, and thus is not competent to 
write about this matter. But she does not stop here. The writer then 
argues that the Video Art Festival was a failure because of bad 
organisation, and that it drowned itself in its overambitious aims. 
Now I’ve nothing against negative criticism, and having been the 
curator and project manager of this event, I would feel uncomfortable 
to speak in praise of the event, since this would be considered a 
biased view, and thus quickly made redundant as anything solid to 
refer to.
However, Ms. Kelmendi is again speaking without knowing. Since during 
the five day lectures and presentations Ms. Kelmendi wasn’t present 
at all. She wasn’t even around. This makes her argument misleading, 
her article unprofessional, and the journalist herself devoid of any 
professional morals. Yet Mr. Kelmendi chooses to publish this text. 
And how does someone who makes tantrums about the other’s immorality 
for the published word allow an article written by a totally 
uninformed journalist be published? How is then Mr. Kelmendi and his 
Java any different from those people and newspapers that he is 
criticising? How is this not proof that what we get on Thursdays 
(when the “different” Java comes out) is a good whipped cream of 
hypocrisy and our Mr. Kelmendi the cherry on top?

Vesa Sahatciu
January 24 2005

>From: Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck at transmediale.de>
>To: "vesa Sahatciu" <s_vesa at hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [spectre] Kosovo 2
>Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:12:43 +0100
>
>vesa,
>can you please resend the text not as an attachment, but as text 
>pasted into the body of the message?
>greetings,
>-a
>
>>I am sorry, I did not explain.
>>I got this email address form Natasa Petresin, who is a good 
>>friend, and who read the text and suggested I send it to you.
>>
>>Kind regards,
>>Vesa Sahatciu
>>
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