Metamorphosis IV
Kino Rinia – Parallel Voices
The Kino Rinia – Parallel Voices edition is conceived in two parts. The first part consists of commissioned texts by authors, who come from various disciplines, including architects, film theorists, cultural anthropologists, and journalists. Local history, cultural memory, and public spaces are deeply intertwined, and their articles effectively revisit, re-mediate, and address a range of questions related to public history and architectural theory, as well as the specifics of the cultural and political heritage of Kino Rinia.
The book provides a contextual overview of the cinema, using collective and personal memory, archival research, and reviews of existing literature. Another chapter uses the concept-term “cinefication” to explain the ideological operation of cinema in the early 1950s in Yugoslavia to illustrate the social and political conditions that led to the opening of over thirty cinemas throughout Kosovo in the first decade after the Second World War. Further, the attention is given to urban developments and the production of cultural spaces in the city of Prishtina after the Second World War. Through a close reading of the architectural features of Kino Rinia, the narrative function in the architectural experience of the cinema building. Here the need to preserve the multilayered heritage of the site becomes even more apparent and urgent. Through a series of oral histories with women of different generations, women’s experiences in cinema get uncovered. The ethnographic approach used in the text allows for close involvement with women’s perspectives and accommodates them within the local history of cinema. Also we understand the changes that the Kino Rinia building has undergone since the 1999 war, due to it being regarded as a commodity and no longer as a socially owned enterprise by the Kosovo Privatization Agency.
The second part of the publication provides a detailed visual and textual documentation of the site-specific artistic intervention, entitled Parallel Voices, conceived by Maksut Vezgishi. The artistic intervention took place between September 7 and 9, 2021 at Kino Rinia. In the context of Metamorphosis IV, the performance worked as an act of transferring and transmitting local knowledge and memory. The section contains three texts by Doruntina Basha, Artrit Bytyçi, and Fjolla Hoxha, which were performed by Donika Ahmeti, Cristina Marí, and AI 1s2 2s2 2p4.
Editor: Erëmirë Krasniqi
Contributing authors: Sihana Klisurica, Tevfik Rada and Bengi Muzbeg, Arbër Sadiki, Rina Geci, Shaban Maxharraj
Design: Silvia Basso and Matteo Bencini
Published by: Shtatëmbëdhjetë(17)
