Part Two
Sokol Beqiri: Then another reason is that I have been connected to Peja since my childhood, secondly, the space, the conditions were a lot better, thirdly, I didn’t have any ambitions to do anything in Pristina, to become a professor or… the total opposite. And when, because I wanted to tell you in the beginning, when Muslim and Agim Çavdarbasha became professors back then, they were trying to convince me to apply to teach at the Academy. I told you that I kind of had a rebellious soul within myself. But the interesting part is that my father supported that. Because he told me, “It sucks the energy from you, that you cannot give everything that you want to do now.”
And he didn’t see an issue in this thing, which is a rare thing, because every father says, “Yes, get the job. You can become a professor and have the salary, you have this and that…” No, he supported me in everything, until the end, without any reserve.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What was the situation at that time, could you exhibit, or you were just working?
Sokol Beqiri: No. When I returned, for some time I continued to exhibit graphics and it was okay. They would send you the invitation, you would pack the graphics and deliver it via mail very easily. I didn’t have anything here anymore, only in the triennales and biennales, I continued for a short time. But then I couldn’t because I didn’t accept. I only did two graphics when I returned here and then I dropped it, I started dealing with other things. And there weren’t exhibitions at that time, we organized the exhibition in Belgrade,
Eëmirë Krasniqi: The one Përtej [Beyond]…
Sokol Beqiri: yes, but that was an exhibition as a statement, it was more an exhibition like a political provocation, they wanted us to show willingness and political courage. To go and say what had to be said in Belgrade, and we worked especially for that.
I think it wasn’t, I mean, it was more of a political gesture. The exhibition was okay, in a sense that the stereotypes that they had in Belgrade, and they simply… several days before I read one of the interviews where they think back on it, and they say that they didn’t expect that. I never tried, I don’t think it is something to mark the 20th anniversary of, you know? The 20th anniversary should be marked for events like… I don’t think there was something there worth marking its 20th anniversary.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What led to that exhibition?
Sokol Beqiri: Huh?
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What led to that exhibition?
Sokol Beqiri: Shkëlzen Maliqi was working for the Soros Foundation and he met Dejan Stretenović and while talking, he realized that they knew nothing about the art in Kosovo, Shkëlzen told them that there are people trying, it would be good to have them and they would do it, and they said, “Yes, of course.” And they had the idea to first go gradually, not go right there. And then we did it, and we were invited to the Cetinje Biennale after that.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: You exhibited the same work?
Sokol Beqiri: The same works, because it was organized in the same year. They asked for the same works because it was very political and explanatory for the time. And then we didn’t exhibit, we exhibited in coffee shops, like everyone.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What was the reaction [from the audience] I am thinking about that time, what was their perception, what did they think you were you doing?
Sokol Beqiri: You know what, when you take it… I was interested in the opinion of some artists I had followed as a student. There was Mrdjan Bajic whom I liked, or Jovan Despot. People who, Dejan Stretenović, professionals whose work I had followed. Others didn’t matter to me. I mean, I was interested in knowing what they thought about the work as such, of course, as a political gesture, there was a very particular audience who were very little who were aware of what was happening and it was definitely a beginning of breaking stereotypes about us, that there was something happening here too.
We have the 20th anniversary, Branislav Demitrović something. I wanted to know what he thought… I mean, it was expected from them, because it was definitely a surprise. But I don’t think it was something for…
Rozafa Imami: But more in relation with the situation of that time, what kind of influence did it have…
Sokol Beqiri: Back then it didn’t have a big influence here or there. We only tackled some people’s consciousness. Here, there were mainly negative reactions, they called us traitors for betraying the common values. I had some polemics with the journalist, I mean, I don’t remember we have intentions to betray our common goals, I said, “I don’t know that I have a common goal with you.” This was exactly the answer.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Who else was there? Ilir Bajri…
Sokol Beqiri: Ilir Bajri played the music, Mehmet [Behluli] and Maksi [Maksut Vezgishi]. And then after that, we organized exhibitions at coffee shops just like everyone.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What was happening, what were you able to produce…
Sokol Beqiri: No, the nature of my work was such that it was not problematic at all to put it at a coffee shop. My only principle was to do it at Fatka’s, because Fatka is so lovely, as a character and as a supporter… he was the greatest supporter of culture at that time in general, the institutions don’t do now what he did back then, and that is why he went bankrupt.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Fatka is a Peja character?
Sokol Beqiri: Hani i Dy Robertëve, not Hani i Dy Robertëve, Fatka, Fatka is a legend. Later the Dodona was opened, I went there and I wanted to do an exhibition, I know that we were planning to do an exhibition before the war, I mean in ’97, in ’98. And that is where the concept for the video started, the first video I did was Milka, Milka in the beginning, I thought about everything, it could take one year or two from the moment I thought about something to the moment I realized it. Because I just dropped it, no I don’t like it, I am not happy with it, no I don’t want to, no I want to, no I don’t like it at all…
Milka as a concept first started when I wanted to do an exhibition at Shkëlzen’s. It was a video, we needed to do the performance. I wanted to literally take a cow and paint it with the colors of Milka. Back then there were discussions where there was KLA or not, whether they have showed or not, before they showed for the first time. The idea was to tie the cow, paint it with the colors of Milka and write “Milka” [on the cow]. And show, it was, there was the basement of the gallery. The idea was to bring a butcher with a mask and do it live in the gallery.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: To slaughter it?
Sokol Beqiri: Yes. And of course, it didn’t have. Then I started after some time and here I came that… after the war, I had an idea from long ago and I did it like a video, right after the war, I wanted to do it before the war. When a bunker was put here, my house and my atelier was right behind the bunker, the bunker here. And the police were located right there, in the bunker, I had a lot of stress. I wanted to go and paint it like a pink cow, and that was the case when my father didn’t support me either because he was afraid. And of course, right after I returned after the war, I painted it Think Pink, meaning think positively.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How, how did you spend the war? Let’s not move so fast.
Sokol Beqiri: Just like everyone. Back then, I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to stay here. My father begged me, “At least let the children.” Just a little before the bombings started. I was in Peja all the time, even when there were fightings. Because there were not a lot of fightings in Peja, there were in the surroundings, in the villages. We were isolated, one year, one year and a half before it. Of course there was stress, like everywhere…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you stay here…
Sokol Beqiri: Yes, yes. But after the bombings, after the bombings, when the bombing started, they displaced us after the second day. I was one of the… at that time I worked with, if you haven’t seen it, you have it in the catalogue, some paintings, if you haven’t seen the exhibition in Pristina, I don’t know whether you have seen it or not? My solo exhibition three years ago. It is in the catalogue, Pera [Petrit Gora] can send it to you via… there are some paintings which I worked after my studies, I returned to painting after a very long time. Because we stayed locked at home all day, everything closed at 12:00 and we couldn’t go out. I had some big boards and I decided to paint. But what I did, for the first time I worked on some figures, only when it was a task at school. First time I started, six paintings, I made some paintings, I mainly painted myself, my wife. And that is a period, that day…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Are they figurative?
Sokol Beqiri: Ah?
Erëmirë Krasniqi: You use figuring in them?
Sokol Beqiri: Paintings of portraits, my wife, myself, my daughter. You know, I never did something like that, only when it was a task at school.
Rozafa Imami: Are those the ones without heads…
Sokol Beqiri: No, no. This is something else. That was in the early ‘90s when I decided that I didn’t want my graphic arts or my paintings to end up somewhere in a bedroom. And I worked with big layers of colors. Not because I wanted to, but I was constantly not happy, the layer was created like that itself, and one of the paintings like that, it is smaller than tis, I put… there is my wife put in a jar, as something that you converse in order to preserve, not to… and the others are something else, but I have six paintings.
Rozafa Imami: Do you still have them?
Sokol Beqiri: I have some and some not. But they were in the exhibition in Pristina, they are in the catalogue. You can see some portraits, some… this was the beginning of my rebellion against graphic arts and painting, when I craved it, I put it in jars and so on… I photocopied myself, do you know, I made portraits and so on, instead of painting, I would put my head in the photocopy machine and… I mean, in the early ‘90s there was a kind… Shkëlzen called it rebellion.
You know what, it was problematic at that time because the debates here started at that time, Shkëlzen was the supporter who always came and wrote, and covered it theoretically and with historical data. And whenever there was an intellectual that said, “Wait because it doesn’t seem much…” You know, without having someone as a theoretical background [English] they eat you, you know? Not that they eat you in the sense that you lose your confidence and quit. You know, I can only lie and say that I didn’t like it when he wrote about me because when I saw what he wrote I felt like I had done a lot.
Rozafa Imami: Maybe we would continue at the time of the war, what did you work on more?
Sokol Beqiri: This is all I worked on during the war, these six…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Portraits…
Sokol Beqiri: Yes, paintings. Mainly portraits of myself and my wife. They aren’t complete, but there is my wife in one, exactly he, and I was inspired by Filip Gastone for that one, When he worked on a painting as if he never did a painting before and I also wanted to do a portrait as if I hadn’t gone to school, as if I hadn’t learned. I took a photo and I went and did it as if I had never learned, just as I felt.
And then I did those paintings. I don’t remember working on something else. There are also some others but I don’t remember them. I know about these six paintings, but they are in a pretty big in size. Two of them were exhibited now in Documenta.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Where did you go during war?
Sokol Beqiri: Huh?
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Where were you sheltered during the war?
Sokol Beqiri: You know that, I remember it as if it was yesterday… I was in the atelier and I painted and I didn’t want to leave under any condition. Meri had all our daughters’ documents prepared, money and everything, some basic stuff, she was always prepared. And I was… one of the paintings that I never finished, the seventh one, I was working like this, I worked on the ground, when they kicked in our neighbor’s house. And I saw it when they were deporting them, I saw that there was no use to stay anymore, I took the car, Renault four and… then I saw the queue, after that…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did you go to Albania?
Sokol Beqiri: No, the crowd led me itself. And I left my parents at home, but in half of the way they told me, “Look, because they were displaced too and they are coming.” They came by foot to Rozhaja and then we went to Ulcinj. We went to Ulcinj like most of the people, and then we returned right after it was over.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: In what condition did you find your house?
Sokol Beqiri: The house, you know what? The house, all the houses were burned, ours was just wet. I mean, it wasn’t burned, even though it was an old house, they could well have burned it, I would build it from the beginning. But, they took everything and turned the water on in the end. But what is interesting, an interesting thing that happened in my house, somebody stayed there sometimes, and that someone went to my atelier and that somebody knew my name. I don’t believe that it was someone who knew me personally, but they knew it from the catalogue or something.
And they left messages for me, I made a mistake that I didn’t document them. And about my performances, as I told you in the beginning, because I can forget about some things while speaking, if it wasn’t for Shkëlzen who documented them, I wouldn’t have many things today. He came and all the photographs of the çarshia[1] that we did, Think Pink, he did all that, because I was like, “I will do it, it doesn’t matter…”
They painted with my colors directly in the wall. They wrote there, I know the names as well, Tazamikša, Nikola, Dragudjojo, Novi Beograd, Blok 70. They even wrote their address. And in the atelier there was written, I didn’t erase it until I moved out, they wrote a message, “Sokol Serbia.” People asked me, “Why don’t you erase it?” I said, “I am not erasing it because the message is written so that somebody reads it, I am happy that I came to read the message.”
They wrote messages and threw my colors there. But I don’t believe that was someone who knew me, but they simply stayed there, I don’t know what happened there. And I mean, the house was uninhabitable.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Did they save your works?
Sokol Beqiri: A? Yes. Not all of them, they tore some of my paintings and threw some others from the third floor, they tore the big ones and brought them downstairs and threw them in the pool. I don’t know who had time to… but graphics were saved, some of them were damaged because I had many of them in the drawers, they took them out to see whether there was anything hidden, money or something. But they damaged a lot of my paintings, that is why I only have a few left.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How did you recover after the war, I mean, how did you rethink your whole role as an artist?
Sokol Beqiri: First, I made the decision not to deal with arts long ago. But just like everything else, I made the decision and then it needed time. There is a text of Shkëlzen, there is poetry in this catalogue, I feel honored because it is the first published poetry. He writes poetry but doesn’t publish them, but he published this one that he dedicated to my family. There he mentions my sisters, mother, father, myself, And when he mentions me, a sequence when I am mentioned, he says, “Where did he find that raki[2] which he served cold.” And he constantly repeated that, “Art doesn’t make sense.” I mean, that was the time… this definitely doesn’t make sense, what am I, what do I want to do…
But then, as I told you, I didn’t realize my projects, the ones that I had in my head, and there were enough… after the war we became like a banana, people from all around came to see who these people are, what these people are. Of course, people also came to see whether there were people engaged in art, and simply, there were demands, I already had, I needed to go for a shooting, to edit, everything was ready, and I started liking that job because I travelled for three weeks to some places, France for example. It seemed more…
But I was constantly followed by another frustration, what I expected, what I thought would make art. For example, when I looked at a work, I thought that it was a reflection of the character of the artist. Let’s say a work of the artists that I liked, not to say the works that I liked. Not only I liked them, but I loved them. When I got the chance to meet with those people, with those works and I saw the difference between the real character of that human and the moralization they reflect in their work and the way that I got the chance to work with people whom I could only dream of, made me not to like all this, exhibitions and so on…
I mean, especially the part where you spend more energy on how to promote yourself than the work that you do… or at least, the criteria that I have set for myself doesn’t… I mean, I saw exhibitions that… I simply thought I shouldn’t be there. But I continued with, I pushed my decision forward, but then in 2006 I continued because I still had projects that I hadn’t realized.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: You were at Documenta in 2002, right?
Sokol Beqiri: I was at Documenta now in 2017.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Weren’t you there in 2002 as well?
Sokol Beqiri: No, the first time that I…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What about René Block?
Sokol Beqiri: Rene Block was in 2002. I was there with [Harald] Szeemann… then together with Szeemann I worked the Beauty of the Failure, Failure of the Beauty [English] in Barcelona. It was from Kandinsky and Malević and he did the exhibition. Then the Sevila Biennale, Locarno Film Festival. There was a part where they played the videos…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Why did I think that all…
Sokol Beqiri: 2002, the Block… you know why you made the connection? Because Block’s interview took place in the Documenta’s building. In 2002, Documenta was now, the first time that I worked after ten years… I worked especially for it. When they invited me for a meeting, I went and met, first I had to meet Charles [Esche] and Galit [Eliat] and didn’t want to do a presentation, but Erzen [Shkololli] insisted and gave them the catalogue. And then when I went there, there was Adam [Szymczyk], the director and we spent some time, I didn’t even dream about it, and nobody sent me any signals that Adam liked the work and so on…
And at that moment I told him, “What now, what will I do after ten years?” And anyway, I thought about it, it wasn’t much of a problem. But when Adam asked me, I went there the same day I rejected an exhibition about the Balkans when the Pera Museum was opened in Istanbul, I didn’t want to be part of it. As well as one in the Modern Art Museum in Budapest, Albanian Contemporary Art, I didn’t want to be part of it. I simply said, I will no longer be part of anything.
And Adam asked me, “Why are you not rejecting me down?” And I explained it to him very beautifully, I was prepared for this question, I said, “You know what?” I connected it with the religion, I said, “For a Muslim who has been practicing the religion with the greatest love for thirty years, their dream is to go to Makkah, and for someone who has been practicing art for thirty years, I did it with the greatest love,” I said, “Their dream is to leave it in Documenta, not everywhere.” And I said, “That is why I am not rejecting you.”
Then until I chose them because I didn’t know what it was going to be, in the second meeting he told Erzen, “It would be better if I spoke to Sokol about work not only about food and wine.” Now they were imposing that topic to me. And I said, “Okay, what will be my contribution?” And in the beginning, it was unreal, almost a mini retrospective, to put the graphics, a kind of… but it was unreal, also in the sense of the space and he said, “What I would like mostly,” because he read it in the catalogue, he read the conversation with Shkëlzen and said, “I like how you react towards different situations, especially…” He said, “I would like to have some new works.”
I already had works, because when a friend of mine told me that she was working with Adam and he likes my work a lot… and he said, “I like how you… and I would like you to have new works.” And when he told me that, I said, “What am I going to do now?” It was problematic, because ten years later you have to do some work, for ten years you have been all over the place, you have been saying that there is no art, art doesn’t make sense. Now this complicates the situation, because now you can, you do something and they say he is lying to us every day, the next day… you know, you could, but I wanted to stay between the attitude that I had developed for those ten years, and I needed to prove it, I said, “If an artist has a mission, their mission is to prove that there is no art.” Which is not an easy job. And I wanted to at least give one proof of that, and I told Adam, I told him my idea and that’s what I did.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What did you do in those ten years?
Sokol Beqiri: Ah?
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What did you do in those ten years of no activity? How did you articulate that? (laughs)
Sokol Beqiri: Nothing, I chilled. (laugh) I chilled for ten years in the coffee shop here. I followed through few generations, now Era and her friends are the youngest generation…. Nothing, I took walks, sometimes I asked, I want to tell you two stories. One day, when my older daughter Toska was little, my father asked her, “What does your father do?” And she was wondering what her father does, “What does your father do?” He was trying to help her, you know, to say a piktor [painter], and he said, “Pi – pi – p…” She said, “Pijanec!” [A drunk] (laugh) and the other one, I am telling you what my second daughter told her teacher, that’s what I did ten years ago. When her teacher asked her, “What does your father do?” She said, “He has fun.” (laugh)
Erëmirë Krasniqi: It is difficult…
Sokol Beqiri: It is very difficult. These ten years, when I decided to stop, the EXIT project was over, the gallery project, the only opportunity for me was to go abroad, my father died, there was no more money. I didn’t want to come to Pristina and look for funds again, I could never do that. And the most logical thing to me, I spent my life in the coffee shop, I wanted to have a gallery in the coffee shop, and I did it. The artists did art, but I did it’s ongoing, ongoing, [English] yes…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What was the Exit project, it is pretty important for the contemporary art…
Sokol Beqiri: I think, without modesty it was the best project that ever happened. It is as a kind of result, at that time, that was the time of the Rene Bloch generation, the avant guard, those were the years, that sadness, they are all those of today. I don’t believe it was all coming out of EXIT but it had a big contribution. Because they got the chance to meet people who were actual in the international scene, to meet, to talk and see the exhibitions here. It was a project of Bundes Kulturstiftung, they made a kind of project relation. And they went out, practically they came to us, they met Erzen and I, we met them many times, they came and said, “Can you make a project which we…” I mean, they had it in Croatia, in Croatia, I don’t know whether they had it in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Moldava and here. But I remember these, I don’t know whether it was also organized somewhere else.
They sponsored a project which we called Missing Identity. Missing because for example with the idea that people here cannot travel to go and see things. I mean, if we can bring them, then Erzen and I used our connections which we had made with artists at various exhibitions and they were ready to come here not only because of friendship but also to see Kosovo, because it was attractive. They did it more because of friendship… and that’s how we started, we came here, we said alright, we organized ours. I had my dilemmas back then as well, but when they all came together there, I didn’t want to ruin the game and say that I didn’t want…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Was it an educative program which had an exhibition…
Sokol Beqiri: There was the exhibition but there were also the courses being held. There was also a library, we brought quite some books to the library which they could take and return, then there was the student exchange with Städelschule. Städelschule, because it was my dream. And I mean, that was missing, What is Missing Doesn’t Hurt. That was it, because when you miss something, you don’t know about it. It doesn’t hurt, you know? And that is where… then the students came here. When they came here, they got to choose to have a change of the approach. And then they all went to Frankfurt, that was an opportunity for many students to maybe go outside Kosovo for the first time, to get the visa, go to Germany and have an exhibition. You know, it was a motivation…
Rozafa Imami: Who were they, do you remember?
Sokol Beqiri: The students?
Rozafa Imami: Yes, those who went from Kosovo?
Sokol Beqiri: Who came to us? All of them.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: No, no. People from Kosovo who were involved in the project, among the students…
Sokol Beqiri: I don’t know who was from the students. There was, I know that there was Jakup [Ferri], who later was hired as a teaching assistant, you know Jakup? Then there was Flaka Haliti, hen Lulzim [Zeqiri], Alban Muja, all those who are active nowadays. Some tried to be active, but their place wasn’t there, you know, this is not something that happens to everyone, you know.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: How did you feel about yourself at that time, in the role of the professor, were you a professor?
Sokol Beqiri: Ah, no, no. You know what? I did everything spontaneously. I only talked to…In principle, I played the role of the professor all the time, because I constantly practiced, many young people came to my coffee shop whom I helped to prepare for the academy. “I want to enroll, can you help me?” And I helped them. They came to the coffee shop, they had a coffee and I corrected their drawings, I told them, I gave them homework. Then, I had a little experience because I had held workshops and so on, in the late 2000s when they invited me abroad with the students. More or less, it became a routine for me just like for professors, even though I was never a professor. I mean, first I showed them my work and they usually invited me to deal with a certain topic or something. Spontaneously, not as a professor… I am the authority and you… I couldn’t teach that way…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Now I am gonna ask you, did you do that job any different from others?
Sokol Beqiri: No, but in principle I got to work with each one of them because most of those who were the first, brought their works to me and I gave them my opinion. Sometimes I liked all of it immediately, sometimes I had comments. I mean, I feel so bad about this because be it that they accepted it or not, you know, I always had this kind of communication with my colleagues. I did the same thing and I still do, but I was never a bad person who mocked them and so on…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: I mean, it must’ve been easier, not easier, but I am just saying since you moved from one medium to another, it must’ve been easier for you to give them… you had a more interdisciplinary perspective to help others, because you tried it. You tested those…
Sokol Beqiri: With those from my generation, colleagues who have finished their studies, I was constantly in touch with them while they were working, but a friendly communication, not like a professor, I don’t want to mention names but most of the good artists always invited me, asked me for advice whenever they worked on something, or they asked, “What do you think?” And I gave my opinion, sometimes I agreed, sometimes not, but this is the kind of communication we had for a long time until…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: What kind of references did you give them, for example, who are the artists for whom you would say, “Look at the work they did in that time period”
Sokol Beqiri: It depends on the type of material they bring, I never give a…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Template…
Sokol Beqiri: No, no, I never give a template that I work or that I like. I can say that there are only few people that I like, but I never do that… first you tell me what you have and according to that, I say one of the things that I think that I know. You cannot ask everyone to look at Filip Gaston. I would ask everyone to look at Gaston, I wouldn’t let anyone paint after him, but what am I to do… why paint, what he did was…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Do you want to exhibit again?
Sokol Beqiri: No.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Are you sure? (laughs)
Sokol Beqiri: No, because I had one later, maybe you can still see it in Kosovo 2.0…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: No, I haven’t seen it…
Sokol Beqiri: And in the end there was a similar question. I don’t know why at Documenta, but I simply told them, “This is a craft, this is a craft that I do.” You asked me, “Are you sure?” I am not sure, but in order to exhibit, I have to asses that I have a big interest from it, as the case with Documenta. Or there, I simply used this example, I said, “I am like a prostitute. You want to have fun, I will do it for you, this is the price,” same goes for the exhibition, yes, this is how much it costs.
I don’t want, I don’t have, this is a fight, you know, you invite those from England to exhibit, to tell something, to do something, and are treated very badly in most of the cases. I don’t have ambitions for anything else, if somebody likes my work and wants to show it because it fits their context, it can happen that I exhibit, but I ask for money.
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Can you…
Sokol Beqiri: I do business, real business…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Clear…(laughs)
Sokol Beqiri: I don’t do anything for myself and…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: I am thinking, what do you do in those cases when you really find it important to react towards something, be it political or social, something you have a clear position, something you can challenge through your art practice? What do you do in such cases, or you just don’t do your work at all?
Sokol Beqiri: To be honest, I no longer have ambitions to react towards…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Not as an ambition, but to be personally involved in something. How do you articulate that?
Sokol Beqiri: Involved in what sense?
Erëmirë Krasniqi: If not through art…
Sokol Beqiri: I don’t get involved…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Ah, you don’t get involved…
Sokol Beqiri: No, I still do. This is what I do through art now…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: I am not saying through art, but I mean, what do you do?
Sokol Beqiri: For example, I analyze, now I want to tell those in my apartment who throw garbage. I pay, I clean the stairs because nobody does. I don’t ask anyone to participate. And the guy living upstairs doesn’t dare to smoke inside because of his wife, so he throws his cigarette on the stairs. The next day I took a crayon and drew a circle with a number one in the wall, just like they do for crime scenes. You use a sense that you have used for things before and that has proven to be practical. And people see that they should not throw things because I am ashamed to tell them not to do so, so I find a way when I want to react but I don’t have many ambitions to react towards phenomenons. At least not for now…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: No, that is why I asked, how you articulate that which preoccupies you?
Sokol Beqiri: Look, it is definitely something that’s within you, you can never stop thinking that way. You cannot stop and think, you will still think that way. I think with my eye, more visually than orally… That is what I am saying, it is a craft, it is a craft, listen, for me it was a pleasure that after ten years, there was a kind of documentation of the fact that it is simply a craft. For ten years I didn’t work, then I just sat and worked on another project.
It is a craft, everybody can learn it, everybody can do it, you only need to want to do it and be sure that you want to do it. It is nothing more, that is why artists always bothered me, it is nothing extraordinary, different, art is like every other craft in the world and everything else. That is why I don’t like them because they believe they are talented and different. I mean, later I read something that says, “Art can only survive if it is liberated from the idea that it is different. And only if it joins the powerful profane kingdom, the ordinary.”
It is nothing more than just another thing, it is nothing more than a status that we try to achieve, a status. I have mentioned it hundred times, that making a painting and a hamburger is the same thing. I swear to God. You take the cloth, I am speaking from my experience, because the hamburger is made like that as well, you take the cloth, you take the color, and here you have red color, the meat, onion is white, you can also find red ones, then there is green salad, yellow mayonnaise, red ketchup. There are colors here as well…
And now when you start reacting here, you put an amount of red color, some shape and here you put meat. And the better you mix the colors, the better the result, the more tasty it will be. It is the same energy, the same process, the same mindset there. It is only that you eat the hamburger and don’t think much, or you just don’t think whether it was tasty or not because you haven’t seen it in a museum. But when you are precise, slowly, maybe there is something… you know, the confusion that we get from something is more than… the way you think about everything is just like boiling kidney beans, and editing… there is a lot of that, wait, this is dominating in relation to that, this is ruining the story… the same ways…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Are you thinking about adding anything?
Sokol Beqiri: Whenever you want, it is not a problem at all…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: No, no. If you think there is something that would complement…
Sokol Beqiri: Ah, if I want to add? You know what, maybe there are things, because in this kind of conversation when you are not focused on a typical question, questions and answers, even if you get prepared to say something, you start something else on the way and… I don’t know what I didn’t finish and what I did…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: No, only if you feel like…
Sokol Beqiri: No, no…
Erëmirë Krasniqi: Because otherwise it is done. Thank you very much!
Sokol Beqiri: Thank you!
[1] Literally small market.
[2] Raki is a very common alcoholic drink made from distillation of fermented fruit.