Artist talk with Flaka Haliti
19 September 2012 at 20:00


Flaka Haliti approaches with her new video installation an affect, whose objectification/ translation by the ways of language or an image has been almost fully colonized by pop culture - love. Imagine uttering "I love you" and not being catapulted to love/romantic dispositive as perpetuated since Renaissance for example by the "blazon" or today by Hollywood production or pop-music. Love communication is essentially intertextual and following the bricolage principle.

As with other affects like pain, trauma, mourning or happiness, representation of love - be it visual (also by the means of choreography) or verbal translation - always fails. There is always a certain surplus left, which refuses to be medially grasped or translated. This translation functions thus most often by the ways of a metaphor (tertium comparationis), a synecdoche (standing for, quantitative relation) or a metonymy (standing for, qualitative relation), so we are always faced with a certain distance between the referent and the signified. In the history of art as well as in contemporary art, love - in translated forms (like body, care, death/mourning, melancholia etc.) - has been an often represented motif, however rare are works which dare(d) to engage with less unmediated representations.

Flaka Haliti's installation on love points merciless to this "lovesickness", to the problem or failure of representation/ translation/communication of love. In the installation the love-discourse is translated by an on-line tool, a digital translation program into one and the same (universal popcultural love English) language. The translated material of the installation consists of actual love letters exchanged by love couples in long distance relationships. Lovers, authors of the letters, were in pain as they were separated, their object of desire was distant, postponed or lost. Therefore seems Flaka Haliti's work to repeat the representation of love so omnipresent in the history of art, love as mourning. Within Flaka's installation love is namely once more articulated as "having love for" and not as "being in love". However, it is exactly this aspect of distance (lovers are separated and due to the distance they long for their lost/distanced beloved) which paradoxically makes love in Halitis installation less mediated, more imminent. Then love is essentially relational - love is quality of a "rationality between a self and an other" (Margaret E. Toye) or with words by Luce Irigarays - love is proximate distance.

Katja Kobolt
RED MIN(E)D


Flaka Haliti was born 1982 in Pristina. Lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Prishtina. Her work is conceptual based using video, sound, installation, photography and performance. She graduated from Academy of Arts, Prishtina University in 2006, when a year later she was invited to work as a guest professor of Aesthetic of Space at Architecture Department Prishtina University. In 2008 she continued her education at Stadelschule, of Maisterschule Fine Arts Frankfurt am Main. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, presentations, symposiums and workshops internationally, including places and institution like MUSAC, Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla, Leon Spain; Gallery Martin Janda, Vienna; Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina; Kosovo Ar Gallery, Prishtina; press to exit project space, Skopje; BRUSSELS BIENNIAL 1; Vienna Fair; Sculpture Museum Gliptoteka HAZU, Zagreb; Siemens ArtLab Gallery, Vienna; Artist-run Sweden Art Fair, Stockholm; Sparwasser .HQ. Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Napon Novi Sad; SPAPORT BIENNIAL, Sarajevo; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Portikus, Frankfurt Main etc.

She is a winner of the First Prize of 'Agriculture and Banking', organized by Stadelschule and Rentenbank, Frankfurt am Main.


Flaka Haliti's exhibition 'I Miss You, I Miss You, 'Till I Don't Miss You Anymore' was supported by Technomarket, Ministry for Culture, Yuuth and Sports, X-Print, Uje Rugove and DZG