A voice exists in voicing by Anna Bromley
Anna Bromley engages people from Kosova in conversation. Listening closely to the stories they tell, she accompanies her interlocutors along the paths their memories, tirades, reflections and speculations take them.
One person leads her to the next: a filmmaker, a festival director, two musicians and a sound engineer, a philosopher, a stage designer, a cultural journalist, a trans woman and her companion … Talking, giggling, munching and getting lost, they go to the village, to the cinema or to the much-loved restaurant Tiffany, plunging themselves into the past, meandering about in the present, pondering about the future.
The artist kicks of the series with a radio drama entitled Shaking the Syntax beginning with her teenage years in East Berlin as well as a radiowalk with Kaltrina Krasniqi on how she almost gets lost in the streets she wasn’t allowed to go to as a child. You can learn more about the artist here.
Head out to the link below to listen to the first episodes and stay tuned as we release new ones in the weeks to come.
Radio drama, 31 min. Beginning with her own teenage years in East Berlin, which was conforming to a so-called West, the artist interweaves micro-stories from Kosovo that reveal the effects of identity politics on lived lives. For her essay-like storytelling, she distorts original sounds from archival recordings and fuses them into electroacoustic compositions. In words and sound, she imagines a hypothetical future that could be fed by the dreamed lives of the voices she has recalled. The radio drama serves as the prelude to nine sonic portraits: seven of human beings, and two of spaces. It includes research recordings with Kaltrina Krasniqi, Genc Salihu, Alisa Maliqi and Shkëlzen Maliqi.
All the way from the City Park passing by the Dodona Theater to Kino Rinia, 47 min. In the early morning, the city park is still cool. Kaltrina and Anna take an espresso among some elderly women and start walking. Back in spring, the filmmaker told Anna about her uncle, who directed the craziest plays in a self-organised theatre during the period of repression. Anna is curious so they stroll in the direction of this building.
A polemic in the sound studio, 24 min. With his message, Toton apologizes for his studio being without air-conditioning. Anna indicates that she is ok with it and looks for the location using the Google map pin that Toton had sent her. There was a photo in the message. An aerial view of a blue and white sunblind and a baobab tree, with café tables in its shade. This place is in the neighbourhood where Kaltrina fears it is about to become expensive. So far, it doesn't look like it is.
Breakfast in Prizren, 30 min. When Anna stood in front of the theatre with Kaltrina, it struck her that Alisa Maliqi’s gallery had the very same name. She wants to know more and has breakfast with Alisa and her partner Shkëlzen in Prizren. At Tiffany, of course – where else? Once back in Prishtina, she heads for the old town to see the archival exploration of the 1997 show at Shtatëmbëdhjetë (Foundation 17).
A video chat between Novi Sad and Pristina, 24 min. Was it Kaltrina who had mentioned Kafu? Whatever the case, Anna certainly had heard a lot about the charismatic musician and activist. For a couple of days, she would endeavour to contact him through every channel. The moment she mentions Kaltrina, the prompt reply comes with an invitation to visit him in Novi Sad. Because of border conflicts with Serbia, it is necessary to take a several-hour detour, so in the end Anna has a video chat with Kafu.
Up and down the stairs through the movie theater in Peja, 24 min. According to the Foundation17 crew, I should visit the young makers of the Anibar Animation Film Festival in Peja. While Peja is known for its mountain panorama, there is also the only railroad line in Kosovo. The worn-out Austrian train carriages take two hours to travel from the capital to the small town. The Anibar headquarters are in a massive vintage cinema. There they have a work by Sokol Beqiri, whom Shkëlzen and Alisa Maliqi featured in their Përtej exhibition in the days when he was still unknown.
To the village by bus, 29 min. “Why don't you come to my village?", writes Vullnet on Facebook. Today or maybe tomorrow? Well, tomorrow is fine, so I go to pick up the cultural journalist at his newsroom. Via the wide arterial roads, we head for Prishtina's bus station.
A conversation on the patio, North-Mitrovica, 36 min. As I board the bus to Mitrovica, I instantly see what Miljana has been trying to tell me. Somehow, the north of the country has been left behind. You can tell by the bus, which has neither official tickets nor seat belts. When I reach Mitrovica, I begin to feel a slight vertigo from the soft-soaked 90s pop cover versions playing in the south side cafés, all of which are quite interchangeable. Across the bridge, on the north side, hard rock is on. You can’t really go wrong with the landmarks Miljana had painted for me on the city map: a monument and a local bank branch.
Rushing between two libraries, 11 min. In the late afternoon, Dardan awaits me at the former Hivzi Sulejmani Library, now the Centre for Narrative Practice. Asking what he looks like, he replies that people describe him as "softspoken". Is this so unusual that I would be certain to recognise him? It turns out to be quite easy, since softspoken doesn’t automatically translate into shy. The artist co-initiated the last self-organised project space in Prishtina. Together with a group he currently works on a zine about subcultural places in Prishtina in the early 2000s. Soon we are off to another library, where we want to pick up Qerkica.
A time travel at the garden of Hivzi Suleimane Library, translated by Donjetë Murati, 40 min. Prishtina is shaken by the suicide of a young woman whose first name was the same as mine. The transwoman had just started her hormone therapy, which neither the Kosovar health system nor society provides for. Yet for a long time, transwoman have been part of the regional way of life. In spring, Anna had told me about Qerkica, her eyes sparkling. As I meet the queer icon, I know exactly why.