Speculating On The Blue

Published in conjunction with Flaka Haliti’s solo presentation conceived for the Kosovo Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, this book continues the artist’s invitation to encounter a visual field in which territorial boundaries are referenced and mediated by the sensory. Through the use of a saturated blue color altered by light and demarcated by architectural forms, the installation at the Venice Biennale reflects on the salient concept of the border.

The United Nations building in Pristina was a point of departure for the exhibition, as Vanessa Joan Müller backgrounds in her essay on the project, as well as relating to concerns of the threshold and the horizon line: “Concatenated concrete pylons form a tall, compact barrier which separates the UN building at the city limits from that very city. The concrete of the barriers was painted on the outside to downplay the appearance of a military safety zone. Different shades of blue.” The conversation between Markus Miessen and Haliti in the book tracks topics from migration to subjectivity, material states in relation to the digital and the status of internationalism.

Haliti’s approach is to recontextualize these politics into a spatial and visual abstraction. The accompanying book follows through on the exhibition’s experience of place and the notion of the horizon as emblems of both possibilities and limitations; bounded by a deep blue, pages have been set as color fields and the typography of the texts shift in scale. Speculating on the Blue offers multiple entry points for imagining present and future relations to histories and institutions.