"The Albanian Conference" (2021)
Mixed media installation and video: "Quantum Reality" 8 min 24 sec; "Freedom" 4 min 59 sec; "Wahala" 3 min 16 sec; "Albanian Conference" 8 min 21 sec
"The Albanian Conference" is a contemporary revision of the first conference of Afro-Asian writers held in Tashkent in 1958. Inspired by the Bandung Conference, the Afro-Asian Writers' Conference took place over two decades to denounce imperialism and establish cultural contacts among participating countries serving as a forum for political debate in addition to sharing literary works.
In the summer of 2020, Ehrenstein invited artists and curators Fadescha, Rebecca Pokua Korang, Shaunak Mahbubani, and the Afrobeats duo DNA to her native Albania to reimagine the conference in a post-colonial and post-digital environment – what issues should be addressed if a conference like that were to take place today? Their process, translated in short videos installed on training devices, shows a new alliance being born around shared concerns of the continuous environmental degradation, militarized police force, relentless racism, casteism, border brutality, and drastic social inequality especially targeting the Global South and its descendants.
/ Photo credit: Kristīne Madjare / Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art