Abstract
As part of the bunkering project in the 1970s and early 1980s, the communist government built more than 173,371 anti-nuclear shelters in Albania alone. They were built on mountain slopes as underground corridors and buildings covered with several hundred centimeters of concrete. In the event of a nuclear attack, the most important people were to take refuge there. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians, among the most forgotten victims of communism, died during the construction of the bunkers. However, the bunkers were never used and some were not even used for exercises. There are thousands of such places in Central and Eastern Europe. Some of them (such as those in Tirana) have been transformed into cultural institutions - they mainly tell about the regime and the Cold War during which they were built, but sometimes stories about the nuclear discourse of fear also serve. This is the case, for example, in Bunk’art. 2 in Tirana, where Ledia Konstandini’s artistic intervention titled Incube is presented. In her work, the artist used the space of decontamination: radioactive showers and places of isolation, in which she placed a path leading through fluorescent, green, multiplied small rooms separated by large, heavy, and thick doors to fluorescent, blue rooms through which the place of isolation is left.
Presenters
Kinga Anna GajdaAdjunct, Institute of European Studies, Faculty of International and Political Studies, Jagiellonian University, Malopolskie, Poland
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life
KEYWORDS
EASTERN EUROPE, NUCLEAR DISCOURSE, BUNKER, SHELTER, NUCLEAR HERITAGE, FEAR, CULTURAL
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