Radical Education discussing alternative education with Mehmet Behluli and Dren Maliqi of the School of Missing Identity and Rizoma / Prishtina, Kosovo

Radical Education (R.E.): What was the context in which the School of Missing Identity was initiated?

Mehmet Behluli (M.B.): We must look at the former Yugoslav territory in its cultural and also in its political meaning. As you know, Kosovo was very underdeveloped in that context and it was a society with a strong patriarchal way of thinking, as well as a closed one. In fact, only Kosovo was a big problem as regards integration into that Yugoslav society. Probably also because of the language, as our language is completely different from the other, Slavic, languages.
If we talk about the development of the art scene in Kosovo we have to talk about the 70's and not before. In my case, I was studying classical painting in Prishtina until 1987. At that time the only way to get something more was to pursue postgraduate studies. I went to Sarajevo to study there from 1988 till 1991. Somehow at the same time other friends went to Ljubljana, such as Sokol Beqiri and Gani Llalloshi who is still living there. They were the first artist with a different, another way of seeing art and the art work. Because until that time we had one artist society, one government party everything was just one and everything was controlled. In this sense it was very difficult to know about what was going outside Kosovo.

R.E.: The connections were only with the people that went to other cities in ex-Yugoslavia and returned?

M.B.: Yes, exactly. At that time we exchanged experiences, we exchanged situations. If I remember correctly, at that time not many things were happening in Bosnia, but at least one was very interesting to me: "Jugoslovenska dokumenta". If you remember, at that time this was a big exhibition on the Yugoslav level. And of course, from Ljubljana we had information about the Graphic Biennale. Then we came back to Prishtina, to our local situation, and we tried to do something… but after 1990 the situation was completely destroyed, also in a political sense; we know about 1990-91 and what happened regarding the complete segregation of Albanians and Serbs.
90s were a very interesting because we were expelled from, I mean Albanians were evicted from buildings, evicted from legal spaces, and then we started to organize in a completely alternative way of living, of acting, as a society. And probably we are carrying out this conversation in the café because the café since that time has been a very important place for artists; everything was happening in the café, from culture to politics. As a matter of fact, Ibrahim Rugova did all his politics in two cafes.
In this process the education was very important. We also tried to organize it in an alternative way in various private spaces: homes, basements, etc. In the beginning it was interesting for me to experience how to resist this kind of situation without exactly fighting the situation but by trying to find alternatives. But unfortunately, that was so just in the beginning, because now the situation is completely different.

R.E.: You were organizing your whole life in a creative way, but how did this formation of alternative institutions sustain its autonomy?

M.B. Albanian diaspora was quite strong at that time, and ‘thanks’ to Milošević we were able to organize ourselves as a kind of new society that would function on different levels. One of these levels was that we created a government that functioned in exile and they were in charge of collecting taxes. Everyone gave 3% and the government functioned with that money.
I don’t understand this even today: how they were satisfied? Okay, you are living your life, we are living our life, and there is this complete segregation from the local Serbian authorities. Even our childhood was somehow forgotten. No friendship, no solidarity… no nothing… a complete segregation happened. Like a Berlin wall, an invisible one, but still there.
As I said we tried, we organized a parallel system. It was not completely financed, but it was partially financed. Also the health care system was organized in this way and there were intentions to organize some level of security but that was repressed because Milošević was afraid of any kind of security institutions.
This financing was primarily dedicated to satisfying basic needs. This financing came from abroad. It was the government in exile organizing a kind of legal way to collect taxes, and then they forwarded that money to the parallel institutions here, a kind of commissions, and that actually functioned.

R.E.: The official system of education, at the higher educational level, the secondary school level, the primary level all these collapsed... what happened, were you, the Albanian majority, fired from work, expelled from schools in the wake of the violent annexation of Kosovo between 1989 and 1991?

M.B.: Yes they fired us, but they used a small trick, you see they required that some agreement be signed stating you accept some new programmes, and of course these new programmes were not acceptable for the majority at that time. But nobody, lets say 99 percent, did not accept that declaration and that was the reason they were fired from the educational and cultural institutions. But they never considered themselves as having been fired, because they immediately started organizing themselves in a parallel way, in an alternative way, and this amounted to a kind of continuity of our educational system. As a small uneducated society, we put a great deal of effort into education, and this was very important, terribly important.

R.E.: Did the School of Missing Identity emerge from this situation where the arts were practically marginalized?

M.B.: We learned how to fight institutions. Today we are kind of alternative. Probably because of that, I don’t know. If you are not accepted, then you must organize yourself in an alternative way. It is very simple. After 1995, when I started to work in an art academy, I realized this was not enough because it was very formal. I wanted to further develop the programmes, invite young lecturers, etc. And this was very difficult at that time because everything was seen in a kind of patriotic nationalistic way of doing things; also at that time independence was a very strong idea. The official narrative was: if we became independent like Slovenia everything would be perfect. But in Kosovo it was a completely different situation. So, when we tried to do something new at the Academy we realized there was very tough resistance.
Some of our colleagues had a very conservative perspective: Picasso, the 50s and 60s, and then like nothing had happened after the 70s. Of course, even today Duchamp is “forbidden”, nobody realizes how important Duchamp is, not to mention Beuys and others after him. So we said, OK, let’s do it out of the system, out of the Academy, that is how we learned as the majority against the dominant regime, we can also try to do the same thing, but at another level. So we said, if you do not accept our programmes, we will leave the Academy and we will create our own educational system or school or classes. But it was very difficult at that time because we did not even imagine how it might function with different kind of sponsors. The Soros NGOs were established in some places at that time in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia and also we had an office in Prishtina, and a Belgrade branch.
These were our first experiences of learning how to fight, how to overcome such segregation, and how to be a part of the system but in a completely different way and at a completely different level…

R.E.: … by creating alternative institutions?

M.B.: Well, we never said alternative, except in such kind of conversation as we are having now, officially we never said ‘the Academy is very bad,’ no, we said ‘the Academy is very beautiful, very good, but it is too classical,’ and what we tried to do was to help them to update with another system. This was a very soft, a very peaceful approach.

R.E.: Like Gandhi?

M.B.: No, more like the “Art of resistance”; this was really learning from life, from practices. In the 90s all the activities took place in cafes, exhibitions, politics and so on. And you can see that in some of the cafes in Prishtina even today. But let me go back to our position. It was very difficult, with these very classical ways of teaching art. Because at that time the professor was a kind of hodja, imam, a student must learn what a professor says and nothing else. And we were against such practices, we wanted dialogue, we wanted a challenge, we wanted opposing viewpoints, and so on.

R.E.: What was your proposal instead of reproducing the dominant – vertical, hierarchical, etc. – teaching practices?

M.B.: Completely different, the professor is no longer a god, a professor is just there to moderate some discussion. Even today they have a ‘recipe’ here for how art should be made and how it should look to be considered good art. If you don’t follow the ‘recipe,’ then the art is bad. So these are the roots of how we learned this kind of alternative way of approaching the lecture hall, in fact the institution, how to help them with another completely different idea.
After 1999 we tried again in the same way, OK, if you don’t want to accept this kind of way of thinking, then you do this out of the system. Missing Identity started somewhere around 2002; we were quite engaged in it, but completely on a volunteer basis. Also if I may mention, I met Irwin for the first time here, when they were here on a completely private basis doing a project with the Kosovo army. We – when I say we, I mean that we are a group of people who opposed the institutional way of making art at that time – invited them and their friends to join our courses, they were not classical courses but kind of exotic, you know, when you try to discover anew hot water. But here was a situation where nobody knew what hot water is. So it was kind of a pioneering way of dealing with things which are perhaps very common in the rest of the world.

R.E.: Were the students from the Academy?

M.B.: Most of them.

R.E.: Were these additional non-formal courses or courses in addition to the courses at the Academy, i.e. part of the Academy curriculum?

M.B.: No, no, nothing like that. This was completely separate from the curriculum of the Academy. How to put it, until that time we had gained some experience on how to do this within the institutions, with officials, with the government, how to try and fool them, but in a very peaceful way, and this is very important because probably because of that we succeeded, because we were never openly opposed to the classical way of teaching art. We said ok, this is very good, fine, but lets try it in a different way. Of course you are not obliged to accept what we are saying, nor this way of communicating, but you should know that this is another way of teaching art. And this was quite successful because young artists were free to choose. Of course not everybody was with us, not everybody accepted this way of thinking.

R.E.: We would like to ask you Dren if you could comment on what your experience is with Missing Identity?

Dren Maliqi (D.M.): It is a bit of a long story, but to put it short I started my studies in 2000 and at the same time with some other students such as Jakup Ferri, Driton Hajredini, Alban Muja, Lulzim Zeqiri we organized a group of artists at the Academy. We knew the study programme was bad. Together we started talking about art and things, and then at a certain moment Shkëlzen Maliqi and Mehmet started organizing courses, so we started gathering there, not 5 students anymore, as before, now it was a group of 15 students. And every Friday we met to discuss different topics.

R.E.: Were these courses organized within the university?

D.M.: No. They were organized in an alternative space, the one Shkëlzen was running. Every week we gathered to have a discussion on contemporary art, how it started from Duchamp through Beuys, towards what is happening today. We were discussing and producing works. It was quite a relief for us, the students, because we didn’t have this chance at the Academy. By doing this we were creating a platform for discussion. For me this was the most important moment in the process. This way we started to discuss things with each other. In this period (2002 on) some of the most important works of this new generation of artist have been created.

R.E.: So by now you have at least six years of experience with the Missing Identity?

D.M.: Yes, and after a while there came the time to transform this platform into some sort of institutional platform. Now we have offices, computers, etc. And now it is time to start with a new generation. Now we are discussing a sort of alternative Academy. At some point we would like to call it an alternative Academy with lectures two times a week…

M.B.: Missing Identity is my opinion important because we have completely free courses; completely free topics that we choose. For example: if we decide to talk about weather, let’s talk about weather. If we decide to talk about nationalism, okay let’s talk about it. That is the situation, with the awareness that everything has a kind of artistic background, and that the participants also have at least some kind of background. So we stage regular exhibitions and art projects, and of course educational work.
I usually repeat this joke that is not actually the joke… Dren’s friend who had finished the Art Academy came up and said to me: “Hey Professor, listen I didn’t learn anything at this Academy, believe me.” And I answered: “No, no. You learned something. You learned that you didn’t learn anything.” It is very important to be aware that you are learning but also that you are learning nothing. From my point of view that is very important.
Then you start from the constructive way of thinking. Okay, that is nothing, but then again, it is something. This way you have the model and you begin to research that model. You grab what it is around you and you turn it upside down, and then it becomes a completely different thing.

R.E.: This initiative emerged as an alternative to the institutionalization of knowledge, as an alternative to the situation at the Academy, but as Dren mentioned, the School of Missing Identity is now becoming an institution itself that requires certain funding, etc. that usually leads to certain positive and of course negative consequences that should be approached critically. So, it would be interesting to hear also about the current situation and recent debates.

M.B.: After 1999 the situation completely changed. If you can imagine, from 1981 till 1999 we were living a very insecure life, a very day-by-day life, a very unpredictable life, and the situation was really difficult. Even if we are talking about making culture, making art, forming an opposition, from the inside it was a very strong fear.
After 1999 we had the feeling that we were free now. We didn’t have policeman, you didn’t have to be afraid of the government, and such things. And this kind of “freedom feeling” was so strong that really it became a problem. Everybody thought that anyone could do anything, because we were free now.
On the conceptual level we talked about reaching a point of chaos: no rule of law, people trying to get as much as they could with no borders, and this kind of mentality. In 1999 we started from there, from zero. And again, this situation is something.
Eventually, institutions with really strange organisms were formed, and a good job with all the collateral damage – freedom of expression, freedom of making decisions, and so on – was done. But in a way, things will be formalized according to how we should function: I am free as long as I am not attacking your freedom.
Of course, at present it is very dramatic. We are waiting for this “independence”. We will see what this declaration of independence will bring to us, but now it is a completely different situation. It is not as dramatic as it may seem from the outside.
Today at the Academy it is not a taboo to teach the ways we are used to at our alternative school, and at this point, if I may say, we have done a good job. Even these conservative guys (the professors), they started to think, okay, video is bullshit, but people, the visitors, they like video, installations, action art, so maybe it is not so bad after all. Just recently my Academy decided to start a new department, a department of contemporary art. This is really something. Also the art galleries, now they want to collaborate with us. We have made all sorts of compromises with them except about the “quality of the show”.

R.E.: Is there, then, no further need for Missing Identity?

M.B.: I think there still is a need for it. I believe that even if you have a “perfect institution” you still need to have an alternative to that because you need to move things ahead also on a different level. When you become established you become the one who dictates things.

R.E.: So, there will be new people involved in it?

M.B.: Yes, the new guys. I am waiting for the new guys.

R.E.: Do you see any problems with the way institutions “think” art?

D.M.: Prishtina has two institutional galleries and there are also two small galleries that are trying to deal with contemporary art; the Rizoma and Stacion Center for Contemporary Art. The problem with the institutional galleries, the National Gallery, for example, is that they have no criteria at all. We had a discussion a while ago and we said we could do things also outside these institutional spaces; I think young artists are expecting too much from them. After all, they cannot give you much here in Kosovo except perhaps some media coverage and that is it. So we said that it is important for us that we do things ourselves, it does not cost money. Well, of course it always costs money, art is a luxury, but you don’t have to do a work of art that requires 5000 EUR or more. We need to make the scene vibrant, to bring new people in and so on.

R.E.: Would you say that Rizoma is one of such initiatives that wants to go the way Missing Identity was going at the beginning, in this sort of “radical becoming”?

D.M.: In some way Rizoma is a direct consequence of Missing Identity. As Mehmet mentioned before, it is linked to institutions, to the Academy, where they will open now a new department for contemporary art, but it is not only that, it is also a space open to new thinking and new approaches to art.

M.B.: I would say that at the moment Rizoma is a space where everybody can participate: anthropologists, activists, artists, punk musicians, anti-militarists, and so on. This means the space is designed like a rhizome.

D.M.: Missing Identity and Rizoma have created a very vibrant art scene here in Prishtina. The problem as I see it is that the scene is functioning mostly from the outside, foreign curators are coming, picking up our artists for exhibitions, and our artists are just waiting for them to come, pick them up for their shows, and take them abroad. But this is not the way a healthy scene should be; we have to function from the inside as well. Rizoma in a way tries to fill this gap.

R.E.: So there is a strong desire present for people to go out of Kosovo, but the idea is also “let’s do something here” to introduce changes in your local environment?

M.B.: Yes, there are some very interesting things we have done that we don’t want or dare to forget.
It is important to develop this very free energy, but also to channel it in a very creative way. I am sure this can be done here, but not immediately. Ten years have passed, another ten are coming, and now we are questioning ourselves regarding how to develop and not merely repeat ourselves. From my point of view, it is not important to act like an art guerilla anymore, now it is time to somehow be within the institution and then try to change something.

R.E.: This is, of course, one perspective. But another one is a more rhizomatic way of organizing the subjectivity, which can emerge from anywhere and you cannot predict the timings.

M.B.: The School of Missing Identity is trying to establish itself as an institution which will act as a part of the system but with a certain degree of independence. And then these young guys will be opposite to our situation. And this is rhizome.

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This conversation took place in a café in Prishtina between Radical Education, Ljubljana, Slovenia and Missing Identity, Prishtina, Kosovo on February 4, 2008.