The Temporal Cadavre Exquis. The Dark Side Of Diversity

Abstract

We will address key questions concerning the development of our cities, in the specific case, Tirana, the capital of Albania, after the new worldwide scenario that come as a consequence of the pandemic. The questions that we will focuses connecting with the idea of diversity, addressing it from the symbolic point of view of the relation between art and architecture, and how this relation can affect resilience and vision of the future. This because we have to treat the space the same way we are doing with time, as a fow. Space and time also belong to this class of quantities. Past, present, and future, forms a continuous whole. Space, likewise, is a continuous quantity. With the fall of the communist regime in 1991, Albania has started to favor market logics and the recognition of property rights. Indeed, what followed such revolutionary political transition was a rapid privatization process and, according to many, an apparently chaotic urban development. The 2020 pandemic highlight the need for a change in the vision of our cities and the way they must develop. In the last months, many to underline new possible visions for our cities have used the idea of utopian concepts of the ideal city, or that of resilience cities. “Utopia” comes from Greek: οὐ (“not”) and τόπος (“place”) which translates as “no-place” and literally means any non-existent society. Sir Thomas Moore coined the term in 1516 when he uses to describe an island where the structure of the society and the equilibrium between men and nature was perfectly balanced. In standard usage, the word's meaning has shifted and now usually describes a non-existent society considerably better than contemporary society. Humans needs these kind of places because mythical space is an intellectual construct and helps us defne our real space. We will analyze how the idea of utopia relates to art and how art can be seen as a way to faces contemporary problematics through its close relation to the space of architecture.