French President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Albania today continued with a visit to the former dictator Enver Hoxha’s villa in central Tirana, which is being transformed into a new cultural destination and the artists’ residence under a project being implemented with the leading French foundation “Art Explora”.
Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed a special ceremony marking the launch of the project:
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I would avail myself of this opportunity to keep my “long-imprisoned” and somehow impaired French alive by underlining that an Albanian saying has it that “rain brings up the growth of hundreds of grains,” and there is also another saying about a friend and guest arriving for visit on a sunny day and it goes “friends fill your heart with warmth.”
So, President Macron arrived on a Sunny day to fill our hearts with warmth and, before he leaves, he is still here on this rainy day to fill our homes with grain. I would like to endlessly thank President Macron for his generosity and this act of love and commitment towards Albania.
For years we have been facing a strong dilemma regarding the future of the Pyramid building, the future of this house that throughout our youth used to embody villainy and evil during darkness and it used to embody a past that the former dictator wished to be our future at an extremely dear cost. Most of the people wanted to wipe everything out. There was also a tendency to demolish the Pyramid structure and transform it into a modern building to house Parliament.
Various ideas were also forwarded regarding this house to turn it into a building of democratic bureaucracy. I have always opposed all these ideas, but, at the same time, I was obliged and forced by the challenge that these structures should be transformed to embody hope and future and, at the same time, making sure that the phantoms of the past be preserved on their walls.
Finally, we reached the conclusion that on these structures, on these walls we should build something that their former owner would have hated and do everything he would have wished to remove immediately. Indeed, one of the things the dictatorship and Enver Hoxha personally hated most were the free expression, the free expression of artists and creators.
We grew up with the Socialist realism slogan: “artists are soldiers of the party and art is a means at the disposal of the party.” At the end, we finally decided to do this and we started off with some small and timid steps by opening the doors of this house for young Albanian artists, film directors, yet we had yet to remove the phantom here.
It was a moment of various events, yet the phantom was still there. When I was provided the opportunity to get to know the Art-Explora Foundation, I wondered: “What about them? They can definitely stay in this house, use it and even project on something somehow vengeful. As we seek to wipe the past out we also try to turn the past into a source of energies in order to better highlight the freedom of speech, respect and admire more the fact of living in a space of freedom.
We should never forget that this freedom is not something we can take for granted and something that has been granted to us as a fact of life without fighting any battle. I believe we can celebrate this opportunity today, the opportunity to blend the past with the present in view of the future, so that we can provide all young local artists and their peers from all over the world the chance to realize that people have died and have sacrificed their lives for their freedom of creation. There have been people who have given and were willing to give away years of their lives just for a single day of freedom, there have been people who couldn’t breathe, who couldn’t make their dream come true for their creations to breathe freely. The second challenge was how to deliver. We needed architects and Federic proposed several names, a list of architectural egoism. At the bottom of the list there was this name NEM, a very humble and timid name. It is a logo that tells you almost nothing, but I asked who these people were. I was told that they are collaborators and I really admire their design.
We had a first meeting at the very villa where the President spent last night and I told them we want a design that is not really a design. One should not distinguish the architect’s hand, but the transformation of the space from the dark into light, and create some sort of a free energy roaming all over the house, where a ghost once used to wander, but this space has been ultimately liberated and we can mention the ghost anytime we wish to do so, but it has been defeated and serves us. They came back with a design that was not really a wonderful one and got down to business and here we are today celebrating and inaugurating all this together a good part of you all, who were supposed to never visit Albania if we were to still pursue the philosophy of the former owner of this house, because we would have killed you all today and we would have taken the President of the Republic hostage.
Moreover, according to the philosophy of the former house owner there are also local enemies of the Albanian people here, including a young man who left Albania when he was still in his mother’s womb while descending Albania’s high mountains and it was in that way that he kept dancing inside his mother’s womb to become a famous choreograph in the free France. There are also France’s friends, the French 007, Julien Roche who repeatedly claims to be an Albanian serving both Albania and France, but he actually is a 007 in the king’s service and regardless of the regime change in France, monarchy, republican monarchy or monarchical republic, he serves the king! Here is a good king!
Thank you everyone! I am confident that the transformed house will open its doors next September and you Mr. President, I don’t immediately expect you to confirm a possible visit, but I very much hope you will send a video full of love, sensitivity and confidence for the huge erotic power art can have. Thank you!
Before concluding, I would like to hand over this ticket, a treasury bond indeed for the first investment in history of Albania in construction of renewable energy funded by the company “Gjeneralë and electricity” in the south-eastern region of Korçë, where all the documents and procedures were in Albanian and French back then. It is a treasury bond with a significant value, a capital worth of 200,000 Francs. You can use it to urge Europe to invest in more renewable energy projects in the Balkans!
Given that the President has spoken a lot a day ago and he is not going to deliver any speech today, we can go on with visiting the villa’s spaces.
