Monumentality, Counter-monumentality, and Political Authority in Post-socialist Albania

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the role that monumentality—and efforts to critique it—have played in shaping the experience of public space in post-socialist Albania. It considers artistic and architectural strategies often labeled ‘counter-monumental’ because they were first developed as a way to challenge authoritarian and nationalist monumental structures from the past, and it argues that in Albania these counter-monumental strategies have become wedded to centralized state power. In the conditions of neoliberal capitalism, projects that aim to undo traditional monumentality can effectively obfuscate political agendas. In Albania, where Edi Rama—the current Prime Minister—is also a practicing artist, the discourses of contemporary art have served to increase the centralization of political authority, and the work of architecture and design firms such as the Brussels-based group 51N4E have reinforced the symbolic power of the state at the same time that they claim to open public spaces up for citizen participation.