OAZA opens at the Centre for Narrative Practice in July 2022 as a community-based library project with a diverse programme of collective activities ranging from reading sessions and self-publishing workshops to community games. The core of the library is a collection of books dedicated to diverse topics repeatedly addressed throughout the pre-biennial research process.

These are gathered by a group of local specialists and activists with the contribution of the city inhabitants, following an inclusive and intergenerational approach that questions standard hierarchies of knowledge. 

In 2021, the Municipality of Prishtina decided that the abandoned former Hivzi Sulejmani library would be rehabilitated to become one of Manifesta 14’s headquarters under the name of the Centre for Narrative Practice.  

The process of restoration is never limited to the refurbishment of buildings, it brings up histories and draws attention to the relationship between space and memory. What do we choose to keep, to restore, to rehabilitate and to remember, and what do we decide to eliminate?

Fixing the material past of a building entails dealing with the immaterial past — society, culture, values and memories. It is an interpretative and participatory process of looking into the past in order to reveal narratives of belonging that do not embody any single history, memory or identity, but that are cumulative and negotiable. 

Archival documentation on the history of the library was extremely limited, so the education team of Manifesta 14 decided to approach the rehabilitation of the space by activating social processes, such as engaging with its collective memory. Foundation Shtatëmbëdhjetë was invited to help in (re)building this knowledge by exploring the different stories and recollections of people who worked in the institution throughout the years, members of the library, its visitors and the citizens of Prishtina. This research resulted in a small publication in Albanian, English and Serbian languages and will be available at Oaza space of the Centre for Narrative Practice. 

Oaza is a new name of the former reading room of the library. It comes from the magazine and the youth literary club based in its premises, that brought to light in 2000s the whole generation of writers, poets and critics. “Oaza” aimed to be a space, which would make possible another form of expression, as a self-liberation, often referred to as the “oasis of tranquility”. The editors of the magazine were saying: “Now should start the period of ‘normalcy’, where it needs to be understood that literature has done its job in the national identity creation, the national history and the leading of liberation wars, and literature should be given back to the art of writing.” 

Oaza re-opens at the Centre for Narrative Practice in July 2022 as a community-based library project with a diverse programme of collective activities ranging from reading sessions and self-publishing workshops to community games. The core of the library is a collection of books dedicated to diverse topics repeatedly addressed throughout the pre-biennial research process. It is gathered by a group of local specialists and activists with the contribution of the city inhabitants, following an inclusive and intergenerational approach that questions usual hierarchies of knowledge.