ZETA Contemporary Art Center

present

Manifesto GREAT WAVE

A project by DebatikCenter of Contemporary Art

Vernissage: Friday 22, at 6pm

Manifesto is a multidisciplinary project that brings together artists, curators, historians, architects, writers, cultural theorists, Albanians or not, etc., to reflect on the current state of contemporary art in Albania and beyond, with the aim of breaking the current artistic and historical narrative. Given the current geopolitical state, Manifesto proposes itself as an antagonistic project and laboratory of ideas in a territory where the neoliberal experiment fused with contemporary art is more evident than ever. Albania has not invented a great historical narrative, unlike many of its neighbors. Here, the conditions of modernism are still able to open up different possibilities for art, possibilities that can be developed without replicating situations and experiences that have already happened elsewhere. For several years, the Manifesto project has been analyzing and working on these particularities, through its first two editions, Manifesto HIJACKING (2022) and Manifesto DESERTION (2023). In this third edition, Manifesto comes as a GREAT WAVE (2024–25), 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.

Manifesto GREAT WAVE is supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives (FfAI), and the Swiss Cultural Fund, a project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), implemented by the Center for Business, Technology and Leadership (CBTL).”