Anticipating another lockdown towards the end of this extraordinary year, it feels refreshing to speak of an opening, especially at Lumbardhi, which has had many moments and degrees of opening in recent years in its long path of transformation to a living institution. This moment also gives us an opportunity to reflect on the journey and put into context this new platform and the direction of Lumbardhi.
The initiative that emerged in response to the attempts to privatize and demolish Kino Lumbardhi proved that civic engagement stops destructive processes and initiates constructive collective practices of building common spaces, institutions, and ideas. Lumbardhi Foundation is the direct legacy and byproduct of this civic initiative. Established to follow up the initial demands and aims, it puts into dialogue the stakeholders and communities to rebuild an institution that responds to its context and our times.
When as founders of the organization, we took over the keys, and unlocked the cinema in 2015, we couldn’t predict what shape it would take today: Not that it would take four government changes and a ruling of the constitutional court to make Lumbardhi a public property. Nor that the full revitalization of the building would start in 2022. However, we made it through by building genuine relations with collaborators, organizations, users, and dedicated supporters. They recognized the need for a long-term commitment to achieve the founding mission of Lumbardhi.
Looking at the process as an open inquiry and a learning experience, we got acquainted with the situation, discrepancies, and possibilities of Kosovo’s evolving cultural infrastructure and governance. Participating in the national and international debates about cultural institutions, we’ve been questioning their possible role within an ongoing process of state-building and accelerated social transformations.
The challenges and the state of solidarity triggered by COVID-19 made us even more aware of the importance of artists, cultural workers, and institutions in coping with the uncertainties of these times and the need for working together to shape a just, sustainable and livable future. In the context of limitations caused by the restrictions and upcoming renovation, Lumbardhi has been shifting its focus from space to refine its vision.
With research, programs, and publishing on one side and collective processes of advocacy and instituting on the other, Lumbardhi aims to blur the lines between art, theory, and practice, finding tools for understanding current times and testing new parameters for development in its neighborhood and the broader civic ecosystem. The new opening is a new way of connecting, opening to deepen relationships with individuals and institutions, sharing knowledge, experiences, and resources, and creating new spaces for these conversations to take place.
In the first step of this phase, we are launching BLLOGU, conceived by the research & programs team of Lumbardhi, to make available parts of research and programs to meet their public and become open for discussion. Initiated as an experimental platform, it will invite artists, researchers, and readers to engage with the existing and upcoming research threads and Lumbardhi’s programs. Starting with weekly articles from the research projects ‘Kinofiguration’ and ‘Nation Formation’ as well as sounds from “Listening Journals” which graced Kino Bahçe in the summer of the pandemic, BLLOGU will expand and shape itself with the reaction of the contributors and the public.