In 1989, while the entire East was enthusiastically reforming, two (neo)Stalinist countries were still left in the area. In the meantime, one of them became a EU member, the other one is struggling a bit more. One has just finished, the other one is still busily working on a grand national project, built in the centre of their respective capitals. One of these projects is a huge cathedral, also inspired from and in direct competition with the country’s main totalitarian edifice. The other preferred to turn an empty totalitarian space into a public and democratic one.<\/p>\n
Project: 51N4E; Anri Sala; Plant en Houtgoed; iRI<\/strong> I know, it is perhaps just too much like our national spirit in Romania, radically oscillating between self-sufficiency and self-flagellation, to connect the People’s Salvation Cathedral to the lay-out of downtown Tirana’s Skanderbeg Square. But the comparison is simply too much at hand, because we have: 2 post-totalitarian contexts: two cities in full ultra-liberal expansion – although, honestly, today’s Bucharest seems almost settled and quiet when compared to what is going on with the constructions, demolitions, and the hoarding of Tirana’s public space; a symbolic, troubled, space; a relationship that is beyond difficult and complex with the recent past (and not only); projects that was explicitly stated as a national one, assumed by the central and local administration.<\/p>\n\n\t
\nText: Ștefan Ghenciulescu<\/strong>
\nPhoto: Laurian Ghinițoiu<\/strong><\/p>\n