A position space is the set of all position vectors in the fundamental space of geometry. If the position vector of a point particle varies with time, it will trace out a path, which marks the trajectory of a particle. This short interview series traces given lines of thought by artists, marks the trajectories of their practice, and models the physical and ideological space of the contemporary art world across a finite dimension.
What recent exhibition did you see that made a strong impression on you and why? 

It was an un-exhibition in Tirana (Albania) titled Manifesto GREAT WAVE, where I acted as instigator-agitator, but mostly as a spectator. This project was proposing a “new movement in the visual, cinematographic, theoretical, and political arts: a movement that deconstructs the country’s past along with its current neoliberalist consolidation, offering a critical retrospective outlook that focuses on social reality and proposes a new historical narrative of Albanian arts and society.” In this un-exhibition many archive works from DebatikCenter of Contemporary Art were reenacted. There were a couple of very impactful pieces that I can mention here.

A 2002 piece by Underground Movement titled sawchanis, which dealt with the Palestinian issue, where two chainsaws with US and Israeli flags attached to them were turned on and wandered alone in the gallery space. A piece that was meant to be installed on the wall was Forbidden Colors (1988) by Felix Gonzales Torres. The activation of this work from the recent past, which at the time had already attracted the attention of the art world for its politics, recreated within the exhibition space the kind of atmosphere that only the methods of genocidal war and perpetual fear can generate. All was accompanied by a deadly silence. Another example was La Société Spectrale’s The Contemporary Crisis and the Zero Degree of Criticism and Curatorship in Albania (witnessed by) (2013-30), a performative work that portrays the so-called “Albanian art scene”, an art scene ready for any political use, created specifically to fill the huge artistic void, and filled with the propaganda of today's politics that uses art or this type of artist, or rather these groups of artists now gathered under a new common umbrella. It seems that these artists are more interested in making propaganda in collaboration with government officials, to create a long show for a very long tourist party, and are in no way connected to the idea of a real union, which implies first and foremost embodying the role of advocacy for urgent battles in the country, or to engage in the improvement of laws that protect artists. By using film extras, the main agents of the Albanian art scene were portrayed eating soup with perforated spoons. This piece also created a strong debate in the city.

What are you working on right now and where will you present your work next?

I’m working on the second episode of TOWARDS, also known as the Russian film. I intend to do two other episodes for this film project, one a Chinese production and the other an American one. I’m writing the Chinese episode now. It is titled Guggenheimeeeeeee……. I have always wanted to show my work in unexpected places, or very specific places that interested me at different times in my life. This means that I am not only interested in contemporary museums, a specific cinema or an art gallery space, but also a random street corner. At the moment I am working with the intention of first showing my pieces in unexpected places on random city streets.

What are the biggest challenges in sustaining your practice where you are based?

Where there has long been no debate and no one was interested in engaging in thought-provoking discourse, there is an urgent need to work to bring to the surface what others no longer want to see. In Albania, for some time now, there is a real critical discourse in the arts which has been missing since the 2000s, and this was the biggest challenge. Breaking the official narrative, addressing important local issues that are connected to global ones, can lead to a new idea of a New Wave in contemporary cinema and art, that starts from here and is not imported like all the ideas that lazy artists try to implant. One has to be against the figure of the Albanian Art Ambassador, or a prepackaged art scene promoted mainly as a decorative effect of political power with the real intent of art-washing. Above all, one has to be against the disengagement of the spectator. I still believe that the main agitator here remains the archive of the DebatikCenter of Contemporary Art, which when reactivated can force changes in these times of urgency.

Armando Lulaj is an artist, filmmaker, and producer of conflict images. His research is oriented towards accentuating the border between economical power, fictional democracy, and social disparity in a global context. In 2003, he founded the DebatikCenter of Contemporary Art (D.C.C.A). Nowadays D.C.C.A is a nexus of artists, filmmakers, academics, writers, art critics and historians, based in Tirana, Albania, which seeks to shed light on the ways in which our contemporary society works but also offer the necessary tools to imagine alternative futures and strategies of resistance to the status quo. Armando Lulaj’s work is part of important public and private collections. His works have been shown at the Prague Biennial (2003, 2007), the 6th Berlin Biennial (2010), the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival (2013), the National Theater in Tirana (2013), and he represented Albania at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).
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