Café Chalupecký: Albert Heta

Albert Heta on Kosovo and Summer School as School: experience of interdisciplinary educational program in Prishtina

Albert Heta is an artist, curator, researcher and social critic. Heta is currently undertaking doctoral research at Bournemouth University. Heta’s works in contemporary art are often simple acts of intervention in an existing social condition, responses to a given situation, or rethinking of existing objects. His notable works It’s time to go visiting: No visa required, a public intervention on British Airways billboards in Prishtina (2003); Embassy of the Republic of Kosova in Cetinje, SCG (2004) for the Cetinje Biennale, curated by Bene Block and Nataša Ilić; and his Kosovar Pavilion Venice Biennial 2005 (2005); distributed in collaboration with e-flux, are not merely the installations or acts of appropriation, but also acts of engagement with the conditions under which the works were accepted by the curators, media, politicians, and the public.

Since 2006, his work is also channeled through a collaborative intervention, project institution Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina. Stacion draws upon locally-rooted approaches as well as regional, European, and international processes.

In response to the current socio-political and economic climate, in 2015 Stacion initiated Summer School as School, a unique, collaborative, international pedagogical program based in Prishtina, is originally inspired by the case of Kosovo, where the higher education system was structured in the mid-1970s. The program has modeled new progressive education approaches.
Today, Summer School as School is a leading collaborative platform for art and discourse, and a model for new pedagogical practices in South-eastern Europe. With an engaged international faculty, Summer School as School, germinates this model of education and artistic collaboration, repositioning the region in relation to its global coordinates.