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Projects current year
Small actions are realized in the different countries of the Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans (SCP). They are in the responsibility of the SCP local offices and decided upon by local boards consisting of 4 cultural experts and a representative of the local Swiss Cooperation Office (SDC). Short summaries of the projects selected for a small actions grant are listed below:
Small actions Prishtina
	Swiss Triple Bill Video, Contemporary dance, Hip Hop music A multidisciplinary performing evening from Switzerland	Applicant(s) ART-Plus Compagnie Linga	Time and place Prizren and Prishtina from: 04.11.2009 till: 11.11.2009	Grant CHF 4'000.00
	This special event promotes cultural communication and cooperation between Swiss artists and socio-cultural organisations in Pristina and Prizren. It offers a special evening with visual arts, contemporary dance and hip hop music, associated with activities that will stimulate creativity, interactions and shared experiences with the local audience. This special event will bring together: 1. The projection of Elodie Pong’s film Secrets for sale (2003), a film about the interactive installation that took place at the Arsenic Theatre (Lausanne, CH) in which each visitor was invited to confide and then contractually sell a personal secret, filmed by 8 surveillance cameras. Secrets for sale deals with intimacy, oscillating between voyeurism -in an era where everything is on sale and under surveillance- and assertive self-expression. 2. The contemporary dance companie linga presents no.thing, performance for six dancers. For this new work that will be Premiered in October 27th, Katarzyna Gdaniec and Marco Cantalupo started with a question: Can the authenticity of a gesture still provoke an emotion at the era of superficial physical performances? This creation focalizes on dance itself and its relationships with music. It proposes a physical dance, tender and powerful, inherent to the style of the company. 3. The show Rap Titan, a hip hop music performance composed by Roberto Garieri and DJ Eagle, singing about the socio-historical conditions of hip hop, the nightmare of the urban world, and how hip hop’s protagonists, tired of violence, gave birth to a real culture. This performance is in English and French and includes local hip hop dancers.
	4th edition of ”Flute Sounds” international music festival-2009 Music International Music Festival	Applicant(s) NGO "New Spirit"	Time and place Prishtina from: 15.06.2009 till: 20.06.2009	Grant CHF 2'284.00
	The 4th edition of "Flute Sounds" brings the attractive six days program that includes a series of workshops nine concert evenings, two documentary films, and multimedia performances. The well known artists of the world, will prepare several workshops and open lectures. This event would create an ideal opportunity for professional cooperation among young musicians flutists and artists from Europe and USA . It will offer a unique chance to attend workshops by Peter Lukas Graf ( Switzerland ) www.peterlukasgraf.ch Katie Down (USA), composer sound artist, and multi-instrumentalist www.katiedown.com,Greg Pattillo – Trio (USA) www.whatisproject.org, Vincent Lucas - flute, Alexandre Gattet - oboe, Daniel Brezynski - trombone, Marc Trenel - bassoon, Pascal Godart – piano, Ute Volker & Angelika Sheridan (Germany) www.utevolker.de, Jen – Kuang Chang (Taiwan) compositor, Hans Parment (Sweden) Japanese pianist Masa Tayama. The Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans Local Office Prishtina assisted by covering local costs of the Swiss artist, Peter Lukas Graf.
	Personal Exhibition: 3D Art and Photography Visual arts Personal exhibition of 3D Art and photography of the young artist	Applicant(s) Leart Zogjani	Time and place Prishtina from: 15.01.2010 till: 25.01.2010	Grant CHF 4'866.00
	3D Art is mainly a new art technique that has experienced tremendous growth in Computer Arts in the last decades around the world. This Division of the exhibition is also subdivided in: • The Pride: This chapter contains 3D artworks that represent different spheres of life as a Kosovan. From history portraitures, to national sports, 3D collages, tradition, architecture and sci-fi fantasy are wrapped with a lot of emotion and interpreted from different points of view: pride, anger, love, nostalgia, and personal experiences. Created in different time intervals, they all tell their stories with different interactions between the objects in the scene while still sharing some kind of “gravitation” between the picture and the viewer • Contemporary Expression of Art: This chapter contains a more contemporary look of the artworks. Having been inspired by what’s beautiful, modern and trendy, has given me a different vision and pushed the 3D professionalism to the limits. Photography: Violence in Schools: it has always been a problem, and has always pushed all sorts of artists to create even some of their masterpieces while interpreting this phenomenon. Trying to go out of the boundaries of documentary photographs, and expressing violence in terms of “Beauty gets defeated by the Beast”, then coming to an even more harsh end: as the victims try to hide their sorrow by making some kind of fake masks, as finally, they become even more violent than their predecessors. • Europe and the Places: While travelling you always see the things in a different way comparing to the local people and get sudden attacks from the views of that part of the world. Sharp-eyed artists have achieved absolutely magnificent results by only photographing the same architectonic monuments that millions of people can see everyday of their lives. Giving a different emotion, or so-called “Emotions from Abroad” in photographs where your city is shown, always make the viewers feel good for where they live, for what is theirs, and for what they’re proud of. In a way, these photos show the author's way of seeing different places around Europe. • Out of the Box: The photographs in this chapter represent the sudden and striking inspirations that have influenced me from time to time. They are not ordered in a storyline, they do not always show the reality, but they express the purest emotions of me as an artist, and strike the viewer in a surprising way.
	Solo Concert Music This is a solo concert of clarinetist Fidan Osmanaj	Applicant(s) Fidan Osmanaj	Time and place Mitrovica and Prishtina from: 25.12.2009 till: 31.12.2009	Grant CHF 4'000.00
	The aim of this project is to introduce the modern way of playing clarinet and works of famous composers that were not played before in Kosovo. Fidan Osmanaj will play different works of composers such as Debessy, Poulenc, Meassien and Brahms accompanied by the recognized pianist, Misbah Kacamaku. These concerts in two towns, Mitrovica and Prishtina will introduce new side of clarinet.
	Song&Wine Music	Applicant(s) Genc Salihu	Time and place Prishtina from: 17.11.2009 till: 19.03.2009	Grant CHF 5'000.00
	This project supports the recording of the music album "Kange e vene" (Song &Wine) that carries a personal tone that is considered to be its main quality. Music and lyric as siblings invite the listener in for a long and intensive visit to an aesthetic setting that tries to invoke instant empathy and self-reflection, tangentially referencing a suffocating social environment. This is one of the main reasons why it deserves to be shared. Its fourteen songs are written exclusively in the variant of the Gheg dialect that is spoken in Kosova and it sets its writer and its listener free to roam within a wide range of lyrical possibility, at the same time recruiting itself in the lines of a small camp of thinkers, linguists and artists that promote the idea of reconsidering Gheg as a worthy dialect that deserves inclusion, even slight dominance, in the Standard Albanian Language.
	Exhibition at "Brick Lane Gallery", London Visual arts	Applicant(s) Lorik Sylejmani	Time and place London from: 15.11.2009 till: 26.04.2010	Grant CHF 1'213.40
	The artist will exhibit 10 artworks in different mix media, mainly in painting and digital pictures. The artworks are prints in plotter, generally standard-sized 50x50cm, framed in 70x70cm with urban life subject are characterized by motto: Neon, Concrete and Rock’n’Roll
	Retrovizorja Music	Applicant(s) Retrovizorja- Band	Time and place Prishtina from: 15.11.2009 till: 15.03.2010	Grant CHF 3'037.00
	Retrovizorja, the music band from Prishtina aims at recording their third album and have a tour in the region and play live music. The Swiss Cultural Programme in the Western Balkans Local Office Prishtina will support the making of the video of their new song which is to be realised in March 2010 on the national TV stations and Retrovizorja's web site.
	“Now” – A platform for up and coming alternative bands Music A practical multimedia project that aims on promoting the music scene in the region	Applicant(s) Dritero Nikqi	Time and place Prishtina, Tirana and Skopje from: 15.11.2009 till: 15.02.2010	Grant CHF 7'500.00
	Now is a practical multimedia project that aims on promoting the music scene in the region by means of promotional recordings both on CD and internet, promotional concerts in the region as well as a web portal. In this recent time in Prishtina and the region there is an eruption of a new sound that very much reflects social and cultural changes in the region. Most of them are young bands/artists that work in a professional manner but do not get exposure, especially across borders. Most of these artists can only be listened to in the rare concerts organized in the city, their music most of the time remains unrecorded and unheard of. The aim of the project is to represent and collect the new sound of the alternative music of the region in a joint CD that will include the seven bands from Prishtina, Shkup and Tirana.
	The Visit - Der Besuch Theatre A theatrical production that will bring together international and local artists in a joint venture intended to foster cultural debate	Applicant(s) 1. Catastrophic Theatre (Artistic Partner), NGO, Houston, Texas, USA 2. Mitrovicë Culture Center (Facility Partner), Mitrovicë, Kosovo 3. Blackbird Books (Fiscal and Production Management Partner), Local NGO, Mitrovicë, Kosovo 4. Art and Media (Marketing and Documentation Partner), Local NGO, Mitrovicë, Kosovo 5. Teatri Oda (Prishtinë Presenting Partner)	Time and place Mitrovica and Prishtina from: 05.06.2009 till: 14.08.2009	Grant CHF 18,294.00
	It is difficult to imagine a play with more relevance to the life in modern-day Kosovo than Dürrenmatt’s “The Visit” (common English translation of “Der Besuch der alten Dame”.) This tale of community, trust, revenge and corruption remains a mainstay of Western theatre fifty-two years after its publication. In this play, Dürrenmatt constructed a fictional town whose inhabitants must decide whether to murder a prominent citizen in exchange for financial gain. The themes of guilt and greed are universal, but certain aspects of “The Visit“ have even more special resonance for Kosovo today: a decaying city, revenge, justice, rule of law, bankruptcy, familial and civil obligations, government corruption, the unintended social and economic side-effects of financial donations, and the role of women in society are all scrutinized. Productions will take place in the Mitrovicë Culture Centre. Performances will be followed by audience discussions, allowing community members and artists the opportunity to engage in a dialogue about the production and the societal issues it address. Technical rehearsals will be continued in “Teatri Oda” in Prishtinë, with performances tentatively scheduled for August 3 and 4. With the assistance of critically acclaimed proponents of adventurous and experimental theatre from the United States, Catastrophic Theatre, the project will develop a production of “Der Besuch der alten Dame” by Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt that, in its development and performance, addresses key social issues that Kosovo faces today.
	Participation in the project "Love in the age of postponed democracy, the critical crisis" Visual Arts Participation in the project "Love in the age of postponed democracy, the critical crisis", to be held at Kunsthalle Luzern, Switzerland www.kunsthalleluzern.ch	Applicant(s) Albert Heta	Time and place Luzern, Switzerland from: 24.05.2009 till: 29.05.2009	Grant CHF 690.00
	Curators from the Balkans, Eastern, Northern, and Western Europe will discuss – in public and closed sessions – the current ability to be critical, as well as the common goals of the "trans-national community", not at last by reporting about the social reality in their own local art scenes. Love in this context is not regarded as romantic, but a political ideal: as the only possible, radical expression of (self)-awareness. How does this ideal fit in with our world of production and distribution, migration and mobility, as well as the idea of the absence or the freedom from religion? What does the alleged (standardized) Western democracy want from us, and what are we ready to give? What can the goal of the critical be, after all?
	Prague Biennale 4 Visual Arts Present Kosovo arts in the Biennale in Prague www.praguebiennale.org	Applicant(s) Driton Hajredini	Time and place Prague from: 14.05.2009 till: 26.07.2009	Grant CHF 1,100.00
	Presenting Kosovo Art (Painting) in the International Exhibition – Prague Biennale 4, with two paintings from a series of suitcase paintings titled: “ The guardians “. Paintings: “The Guardians”, 80 X 100 cm, 2006, Oil on canvas “The Guardians 2”, 80 X 100 cm , 2008, Oil on canvas
	Family Portray Documentary film A personal story carrying a deep feeling of personal access and privacy	Applicant(s) Kaltrina Krasniqi	Time and place Prishtina from: 13.04.2009 till: 20.06.2009	Grant CHF 9'832.00
	This is a 20 min. documentary carrying stories of the author's family and although intially meant to answer some questions on the position of the women it ended up being a story on the author's grandfatyer who was a communist women position, on his ideas of the new world and his escape from the past. The concept of this project is based on the risk of leaving each character within the shape of their believes and worlds. As a result of this artistic decision the final version of the film would be a collection of four stories:
	Lost Orientation Documentary Film Production of a short documentary film aiming at showing the difficulties in orientation one faces in the city of Prishtina	Applicant(s) Alban Muja Yll Çitaku	Time and place Prishtina from: 10.04.2009 till: 30.06.2009	Grant CHF 5,850.00
	This documentary aims to analyze the way of how people in this town (Prishtina) physically orient themselves, what is for them the main object or building for their orientation. Using the names of the street is definitely not the way they orient themselves. In the past decade names of streets were changed several times, therefore it seems that nobody uses names of streets for orientation. The short documentary film “Lost Orientation” will help the society and institutions working on this problem, present for a few years now. The issue problem of orientation can be avoided only if the Prishtina Municipality in joint work with the Ministry of Spatial Planning created a strategic project on naming and renaming of streets.
	Publishing the MM journal Cultural debate The Journal MM is a quarterly on Theory and Arts	Applicant(s) Centre for Humanistic Studies "Gani Bobi"	Time and place Prishtina from: 10.04.2009 till: 30.04.2010	Grant CHF 30,000.00 CHF 10,000.00 contribution of SCP Regional Office
	The Journal MM is published four times a year and covers different fields of theoretical and Art, including: philosophy, sociology, social issues, art, architecture, and literature. MM offers an interdisciplinary, critical, and innovative approach. MM aims to reflect on key issues of different fields of contemporary life, both home and abroad. In the period of November 2008 – October 2009 we plan to publish four editions of the journal with average volume 200 pages of A4 format. Each edition of the journal will be illustrated with creative work of a local or international artist, including visual artists, photographers, or architects. Centre for Humanistic Studies “Gani Bobi” (CGB) is an NGO founded in 1997, which deals with educational activities, media monitoring and publishing. Since 1997, CGB is in charge for publishing MM, the journal and books collection. The MM journal has been considered as the most valuable periodical publication in Albanian language not only in Kosovo. The publishing activity that holds the name MM (2000 or the third millennia in Latin numerator) has started its activity 13 years ago by publishing the journal MM and publishing the books of two Kosovo authors.
	Death and the Maiden Theatre play	Applicant(s) Theatrical Coproduction by Teatri Urban & National Theatre in Prishtina	Time and place Prishtina from: 02.04.2009 till: 03.05.2009	Grant CHF 10,000.00
	A workshop production of Death and the Maiden was staged in Santiago, Chile, opening in March, 1991, and in July of the same year the play had its world premiere at London's Royal Court Upstairs. The production, which received the London Time Out Best Play Award for 1991, moved to the Royal Court Main stage in November. The play was well received; critics found it both dramatically engaging and historically sensible (given the number of societies around the world facing painful legacies of repressive regimes). “Death and the Maiden” is valued as a dramatic work that examines psychological repercussions of human rights abuses. “Teatri Urban” is a newly established theatre company, with the objective to produce theatre performances in naturalistic, unconventional, urban style and like themes. Combining private initiative with public spaces and infrastructure, “Teatri Urban” aims to produce create contemporary theatre plays throughout Kosovo.
	Healing Magic Documentary movie The proposed 30 minute documentary film explores the phenomenon of black magic belief and the "healing" methods used.	Applicant(s) Crossing Bridges Productions	Time and place Prishtina from: 01.11.2008 till: 01.07.2009	Grant CHF 12,209.00
	The proposed 30 minute documentary film will explore the phenomenon of the black magic belief and the healing methods used including chanting, amulets and melting of gunpowder. Combining the stories of these “healers” and the people who attend and believe in these methods of healing, this documentary will bring to the screen a unique and off-the-page phenomenon to the mainstream audience. Moreover, it will have an analytical approach to the phenomenon through in depth interviews with the healers trying to unravel the foundations of their belief system and their practices. The film will have an artistic and experimental look throughout, and will be character based. The stories of both the healers and patients will be the guiding ones throughout the film, which will end in a very surreal way.
	The Other Side of Oneself Visual Arts Exhibition consist of several separate art pieces	Applicant(s) Alketa Xhafa Mripa	Time and place Prishtina from: 25.10.2008 till: 30.09.2009	Grant CHF 7,041.30
	The project will have a several walk-through areas, making the audience participate as performers. The aim is to challenge the audience to reflect on their development and experiences gathered throughout their life by getting them to recognise the cognitive stages of their evolution which have transformed them into who they are now. The concept revolves around identification of our cultural markers that will be represented through every piece. Particular attention was given to representing females’ expressions and participation in society. Their fascinations with authority, as well as their naked ambition, were hopefully captured through these pieces. The objective is to instill confidence about who we are and to appreciate that the other side of us is different and acceptable. This project will be an attempt to get the Kosovo audience, in general, and Kosovo women, in particular, to reflect on themselves and their lives. This will be achieved by getting them to confront different stages of their developments visually, thus separating the exhibition into several separate pieces of art-work.