Broken Narrative

Armando Lulaj, an Albanian artist, is the focus of this book, which connects history, politics and the contemporary art world. Its center is a long conversation between Lulaj and Marco Mazzi, an Italian artist and writer. The dialogue begins in 1997, when Albania was shaken by upheaval, lawlessness, scandal and mass emigration, and when the first signs of neoliberalism were taking root in a country already badly damaged. It then carries on to the present, tracing how politics, concealed beneath artistic forms, has once again undone every alternative future the country might have had.

The book also draws a line between recent Albanian political life and contemporary art. Its argument is that Albania's situation is essential for understanding how international power operates within contemporary art and architecture, and what role politics plays in that process.

The book appears in a bilingual English and Japanese edition, partly as a tribute to the delicate aesthetics of Japanese poetry, which shaped many of Lulaj's works. It also recalls the subversive films of the Red Army, active in Japan around the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. The front matter includes a preface in English by Albanian scholar Jonida Gashi and one in Japanese by photographer Osamu Kanemura.