No wise Fish would escape without flying

No wise Fish would escape without flying is the first chapter of the trilogy The Animals. Once Upon a Time…in the present Time. The video tells the story of a fish made of paper and a motor that tries to escape an inflatable shark by flying. The balloon’s hunt takes place in Prishtina, in the National Library of Kosovo. Following the flight, we look down on the building, which has changed its life several times over its history. The library was conceived at a time when the Yugoslav federal government aimed to strengthen Kosovo. Then, for almost a decade, it was turned into an Orthodox religious school, and during the NATO bombing it was used by the Serbian army as a command centre. It is through the chase that we observe the structure from outside and from within. The glass and steel domes, each a different size, filter the light naturally. How can the goldfish slip out of the shark’s grip and fly free?
The artist focuses on human feelings such as fear and powerlessness. History is an abstract backdrop, imagination the collective tool for making reality malleable. Electronics and robotics are an integral part of the game set in motion to heighten the imagination. The film’s narrative was built with a group of children from Bonevet, a non-profit organisation founded in Prishtina in 2014, looking for a way to free the fish from the net. Co-authorship is the premise for exploring, overturning and looking in new directions, especially when the protagonists are a group of children engaging with an architecture deeply bound up with the history of their country.