DRAGOT, a miryad minded manifesto, 1st July h. 21,30, Pyramid, International Center of Culture, Blvd. Deshmorët e Kombit, Tirana. 

The personality of a man is something very complex.  Everyone of us has inside a myriad of information that automatically become one myriad of infuences.  Infuences that form and transform our thoughts continuously, forming a myriad of minds in every single person.  A myriad minded manifest visualizes this myriad of information and infuences.  "antihistorical" phrases like:  "Enver Hoxha wasn’t a dictator, but a genius of the democracy" constructs a text that in its entirely, encloses all the instruments of the political persuasion, the images, the declared words and the written words. 
The work in fact, is a video animation in which the same text, prepared from Aliaj, "constructs" the faces of the more important Albanian political personages, at the same time a voice (the artist’s voice) will recite that text together to all the "public" who will assist to the event.  The participation of the persons is a central element in this work, because the myriad of persons who, with their multiple personalities will read the text - the same text that at the same time will construct the faces of the Albanian politicians - is the same myriad of minds that two days after, have to vote and to choose their own political future. In fact, it wasn’t a case that we choose this date – 1st July - in order to realize this video performance. Art, so like Politics, must contribute to widen the mind of the persons making them to reflect on facts that normally are given for discount or that aren’t taken in consideration.  Enver Hoxha was a democratic genius, is, obviously a provocation, but only the persons themselfs, with theirs acts. will determine the course of the history, and perhaps a provocation can insinuate another infuence in the myriad of infuences and contribute "to change" the history of country.

With the contribution of: Tirana National Gallery, Credins Bank

Produced by:  1/60 insurgent space
Input director: Stefano Romano – sr_inbox@yahoo.com
Curator: Stefano Romano

info:  info@1-60insurgentspace.org
Coordination of the exhibitions: Edi Muka

 

A Myriad Minded Manifesto

During the check-in of his plane in Brussels to Tirana, Robert Dragot and I had a 20 min.mobile conversation .
The Albanian multi media artist was invited to show one of his most recent artpieces just before the Albanian elections .
Dragot  expressed his concerns over these recent elections . he wanted to leave the country just after finishing his show and just before the election outcome . Right timing…..because the piece’ proved to be quite tough for some politicians over there’ he said
The 2 main parties , democrats and socialists were to confront each other (which would lead to the victory of the socialists anyway…)
Dragot was already referring to the elections as to the result would not make any difference at all , ‘because ‘, so he added , they are all ex-communists anyway , they ‘re all born in the same nest…’.

Originally , the albanian multi media performer Robert Dragot , had the intention of showing on the screen a text people would word by word repeat , using about the same mass technique the dictatorships were using but this time to turn it into an artpiece instead , worst and most feared enemy of leaders who could not tolerate creative thinking simply
because the basis of all art is absolute personal freedom.

The artist  decided instead to have a huge screen mounted where a video animation and soundpiece titled ‘Myriad Minded Manifesto’ was to be shown .
The animation piece portraits the famous former Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha , smiling as was the custom for all leaders who were superb masters in twisting truths and adapting history to their own personal needs . Communism ,populism and its worst mutation ,dictatorship ,often was the perfect mask to block influence from the threatening and corrupting outside while manipulating and terrorizing ill-informed people.
The smiling and playboy looking hoxha is slowly eaten or ‘written’away by the characters of a text of which one can only vaguely read the word ‘revolution’ (who wrote the cynical oneliner that the revolution always eats its own children ?)

Hoxha disappears like a corpse eaten by voracious maggots or like a sandcastle washed away by the incoming and inevitable waves of history.

The piece reminds of an anecdote which has been written after Hoxha’s death and tells how Hoxha , visiting a remote village , talked to an old woman who told him , to the horror of his surrounding court, his face was bearing the marks of an advanced age …
Hoxha, so was told , was obsessed with an eternal youth and was using cosmetics to hide the inevitable wrinkles of time .Some pretend he even drank babyblood.
 A pathological trait of all dictators, to have to disappear one day , to be ruled by the most common things of life , growing old and having to die one day just like everyone else on the planet.
The written word (and information in general) was always considered as extremely poisonous for the vulnerable minds of the prisoners of sealed-off countries . Written word could lead to criticism and criticism to organized search for historical truth and open communication.
Remember ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by the French filmdirector Truffaut where books were absolutely forbidden and where individuals were secretly learning them by heart to pass them over to posterity .The biggest crime of humanity is not committing crime but forgetting it…
‘the communists of yesterday rule the Albania of today ‘ Dragot said

And once Hoxha , by the frenesy of the written characters crawling over his face, has vanished , another man slowly appears , clean cut and looking overconfident , smiling and ready to throw sunlight into the dark cellars  of the past
A new type of political businessman. Chameleon of marketing.

In the 80’s,Gerhard Richter painted a series of black paintings , images ambiguous because of their content .They show that unclear past of Western Germany of the ‘70’s where the RAF had the intention to get rid of all the ex-nazies back in the saddle after the second world war to reboost the vital German economy without which Europe simply would not function .Back in the saddle with the support of the allies…..

With ‘Myriad minded Manifesto ‘the artist truly and sharply succeeded in unveiling two of the most vile and fundamental traits of human race, hypocrisy and opportunism and yet, in the end , they make the world go round. I wished Dragot a good flight.

Koen Wastijn