Authors

Discussion

This paper explores the memory-scapes of Albania’s post-communist transition, taking as a starting point the landscapes of emptiness and ruination that came to define the 1990s. These landscapes—marked by the mass migration of people and the obsolescence of communist infrastructure—manifest the tension between the promises of democracy and privatisation, and the material and social ruptures left in their wake. Taking spaces of abandonment as both a physical and metaphorical starting point, the paper examines how the notion of democracy was deployed during the post-Cold War period to shape the “post-socialist” transitional landscape. Often, democracy functioned as a rhetorical tool to legitimise the dismantling of socialist institutions, presenting their obsolescence as an inevitable prerequisite for neoliberal progress and modernity. 

In developing this analysis, the paper examines how notions of democracy have shaped artistic, curatorial as well the life of cultural institutions in after the 1990s in Albania. bringing this also in comparison to the neighbouring post-socialist countries. Through this analysis the paper argues that “transition” was less about actual societal transformation and more about an ideological reconstruction that infiltrated every aspect of public life. This ideological construct perpetuated a pervasive sense of incompleteness, where the future remained a perpetually deferred promise.

Extending this critique, the paper turns to contemporary examples of redevelopment projects in Albania, framed by similarly aspirational narratives of progress and development. While these projects signal attempts to break with the past, they frequently reproduce cycles of exclusion, erasure, and speculation. This reveals how, despite the apparent remaking of public spaces, democracy in its substantive form remains elusive.