Armando Lulaj, Measuring the Square, 2018

Growing up in Tirana in the 1980s, I vividly remember walking past the so-called “Blloku” area near the city centre. It was a high-security, heavily guarded zone surrounded by armed soldiers and barbed wire with twoand three-storey villas inside of which lived the then political elite. The area is still one the wealthiest in the country but the villas have long been transformed into fashionable and expensive bars and restaurants, and inside the tall apartment blocks built after the 1990s live the most corrupt representatives of today’s economic and political elites and the nouveau riche. It is not surprising then that even though the “Blloku” area is no longer surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire, but, rather, by surveillance cameras, it still makes one feel self-conscious and ill at ease.

My first idea was to once again surround this area with razor wire but, instead of starting from the ground as they used to do in the past, I wanted to start from the sky, using the treetops and street lamps as supports for the wire. I wanted to separate the space we live in from the space they live in, but for obvious reasons the idea was impossible to implement.

Another space where the separation between “them” and “us” has even more profound repercussions, because it relates not only to different social classes but also to our past and our memory of the past, is the new Skanderbeg Square. Most people, citizens of Tirana and beyond, do not like its design. By using a cheap design concept they were able to separate the past and the present by destroying the past, erasing the recent events inscribed on the square so as to build a “square without values”. In my view this square is not about remembering, it is about forgetting. It is about entertainment and political propaganda.

Measuring the Square is the documentation/result of a seven-hour performance. Using a one-meter piece of razor wire, I traced the entire perimeter of the new square, which is over six hundred meters long. While measuring the square I accidentally took part in a political performance that was unfolding only five meters away from me. First, I witnessed a group of worried looking street sweepers from the sanitation department hurriedly clean the square while officers from the municipal police force checked for any remaining dirt and/or garbage. Then, I noticed a rapidly expanding group of fashionably dressed youngsters carrying the latest smartphones calling each other up and gathering together on the square, all the whole taking pains to strike a casual pose. It all began to make sense when I noticed the Mayor of Tirana approaching surrounded by his entourage and bodyguards. Two cameramen stood in position, ready to shoot and capture for posterity this “chance” meeting between the Mayor and the new face of the future of the country casually standing around on the new square. It was a horrendous spectacle, something that is unfortunately happening all too often. I documented it while on the 216th meter.