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LIGHTING A FIRE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN

Conjured by Vincent W.J van Gerven Oei and Çiçek İlengiz

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LIGHTING A FIRE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN takes the form of a 60-km walk around the semirural perimeter of Tirana, along which an Italian architect in 2017 proposed an “Orbital Forest,” a “belt of 2 million trees around the city, that has the possibility of blocking the consumption of land.” Yet land consumption has skyrocketed in recent years to satisfy the corrupt construction mania of the government and oligarchs. Lamenting this loss of green spaces, the Prime Minister has responded with his own private 3.6 million euro “Garden of Eden,” to be constructed in the courtyard of his office as “a reminder of the nature for a long time lost in our built environments.” As political action has turned out to be ineffective in the deserted Albanian landscape of ideas, “Lighting a Fire on the Bottom of the Ocean” mobilizes the Orbital Forest for another purpose. The MANIFESTO collective and all who wish to join will inaugurate a counterclockwise, looping path through a non-existing forest to imagine life in Tirana without constraints.