Credits: 2025, 4k Video, 21’24”  Courtesy The Artist and Giorgio Persano Gallery, Torino

Driant Zeneli, in collaboration with Md. Tasnimul Izaz Bhuiyan, Pulak K. Sarkar, Rafi Nur Hamid, Sondip Roy, Sumaiya Sultana, with the special contribution of Mahmudul Hasan Dipu.

Commissioned by: Samdani Art Foundation and Museo Castromediano of Lecce (Regione Puglia)

Partners: Art House Foundation, Shkoder (Albania), EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (Greece), and Civic Museum of Castelbuono, Palermo (Italy).Supported by: Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture within the framework of the Italian Council program (13th edition, 2024).

When winds in Monsoon play, the White Peacock will sweep away is an opera-film by artist Driant Zeneli. Set within the Parliament of Dhaka and the Srihatta Art Centre in Sylhet (Bangladesh), the work unfolds as an allegorical fable featuring a white peacock that falls in love with his own tear.  The story, paced by the six seasons of the Bengali calendar, guides us through multiple layers of interpretation, addressing political and ecological themes, which took reference from the movement of “July Revolution, 2024, which died more than a thousand people from a series of protests and significant government changes in Bangladesh, culminating in the downfall of the regime.

Zeneli reflects on the tensions between the fall, power, and love, giving shape to a form of magical realism in which utopias subvert the natural order of things and open up unconventional imaginative spaces. The extraordinary brutalist architecture designed by Louis Kahn becomes an integral part of the narration, both as a physical and metaphorical presence. The film’s voice-over draws inspiration from the Khonar Bachan, ancient proverbs from the Bengali oral tradition associated with Khona, a legendary astrologer and poet. The project is distinguished by the active involvement of young artists in Bangladesh, who contributed to shaping both the narrative and the visual elements of the work. With the collaboration of Sumaiya Sultana with the costume designer Lilian Indraccolo.

The Baroque soundtrack is rearranged by Maestro Francesco Aliberti and performed by countertenor Pasquale Auricchio, who also acts in the piece. The music, arranged and composed in a contemporary key, merges Baroque influences with Bengali musical traditional instruments and musical elements creating an original and hybrid score.

Maybe the Cosmos Is Not So Extraordinary (2019), is a sculptural video installation which expands upon a multidisciplinary project entitled Beneath a Surface There is Just Another Surface started in 2015 at Metallurgjik, a dystopian industrial complex, in the city of Elbasan, Albania. The project and its title derive from the pioneering science-fiction novel On the Way to Epsilon Eridani (1983) by Albanian physicist and writer Arion Hysenbegas.

The film is set in the mines of Bulqize, a city in the northeast of the country, where, since 1918, the chrome mineral has been extracted. Chrome represents a key resource for the industrial development of Albania and collides with economic and political conflicts in the Global South. The film stages a group of teenagers from Bulqize discovering a cosmic capsule which follows the journey of chrome, from its extraction and processing within the factory to its exportation and worldwide exploitation. This “geopolitical” space travel therefore turns this shady and dramatic industrial environment into an ambivalent space for collapse and takeoff. A drone escorts the characters throughout the space travel, whereas the crossed echo of the voices of Bujar and Flora, the two protagonists of the previous chapter of the trilogy, resonates from above. Quoting Hysenbegas’ scientific and literary tale, they breathe a parallel rhythm into the film narrative.

Through binary storytelling and precise choreography of image and sound, the factory operates not only as an industrial space or geopolitical hub but as a visually performative force. The extraction of chrome is turned into a hypnotic sculptural image and the overall factory therefore translates into a big light and sound “parallel” installation, organically plugged into the walls of Arsenale. In this productive and immersive space, Driant Zeneli intends to create tension between an oppressive underground reality and a utopian space of possibility and liberation.

Maybe the cosmos is not so extraordinary and tries to physically reveal the ability of the ordinary, even in its darkest corners, to expand our existence.

Courtesy Fondazione In Between Art and Film

Trailer, Video, 01’03”

Once upon a time, there was a tiny valley surrounded by the concrete mountains. The valley was home to many different species. Various stories and peculiar love affairs took place there. Sometimes, fairy tales present more opportunities for creating uncanny feelings than there are in real life. How to create a fairy tale about the Uncanny Lovers? 

“The Valley of the Uncanny Lovers” was born with the need to investigate the everyday space in 1970s/80s modernist buildings, and the relation between artificial and what we call natural sources of energy, as lithium, natural gas and uranium. The intention is to analyze the relationship that people establish with the architecture and environment from an emotional point of view, for example, falling in love as a feeling towards the other, towards a technological device or towards a robot guided by artificial intelligence. The first chapter was developed in Belgrade, Serbia, the second one is ongoing in Duisburg, Germany, and the last would be in The City of the Stars”, Givors, France.

The first chapter of the video installation The Valley of the Uncanny Lovers is written by a student of the faculty of dramaturgy in Belgrade Mitar Milecevic. The story tells us about a tree leaf called Tinny. The leaf lives on a tree surrounded by concrete mountains. One day it falls in love in a platonic way with a flower that lives on the ground and to meet the flower, the leaf does everything to get down to the ground, asking for the help of the wind to take it away from the life in the tree to reach the flower at any cost on earth. After many attempts, thanks to the wind, the leaf manages to fall from the tree and get closer to the much sought-after love. When it reaches the ground, the leaf realizes that it is not a flower, but a lifeless lithium battery. Even though the battery does not respond to the leaf’s questions, it decides to live with it until the end.

Serbia has vast lithium deposits near the western city of Loznica, where a mining project being developed by the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has been a perennial political fault line in the Balkan country in recent years. However, it has proved unpopular with Serbians worried about pollution, public health and the environmental impact of the project.

As is often the case, artist Driant Zeneli’s works come from co-creations, this time with KCB’s invitation to collaborate with a group of students of the Faculty of Dramaturgy in Belgrade.

The first chapter is realized in the area of New Belgrade called Bežanijski Blokovi, specifically in block nr. 61 built in 1975-76. In total, 14 solitary blocks were built in the block.

2023, 07’12’’, Two-channel video installation, Courtesy the Artist.

This is the I Chapter of the trilogy: The Valley of the Uncanny Lovers (2023 – ….)

Trailer, Video, 02’16”

The film is inspired by an ancient fable. It was filmed at Skopje’s Central Post Office, one of the most emblematic brutalist buildings in the Balkans. Built in 1974, the structure was ravaged after a fire outbreak and UNESCO now considers it as one of the 7 most endangered buildings in the world. Developed in a collaborative process that is integral to the artist’s practice, this film was conceived and created with the students of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia.

Film, 2022, 11’46”, color, sound. Courtesy of the Artist and Fondazione In Between Art Film

This is the III Chapter of the trilogy: The Animals. Once Upon a Time … in a present Time. (2019 – 2022)

Trailer, Video, 04’13”

“How deep can a Dragonfly swim under the Ocean?”, the second chapter of the trilogy The Animals. Once Upon a time… in the present time. tells the story of a dragonfly that, despite being able to move its wings, is condemned to never fly, thus failing to get away from the ocean. The dragonfly, a symbol of spiritual depth, power, change of perspective, and adaptation recalls the real experience of Rilond Risto, who spent 21 years of isolation in Albanian prisons, creating mechanical insects capable of flying from various circumstantial tools during his last period of imprisonment. The dragonfly moves inside the Pyramid of Tirana, a memorial monument to the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha built in the late 1980s. Since the 90s this building has experienced different moments of transformation while having different functions. It is currently being repurposed to become a new hub for Tirana
Among the architecture of the brutalist monument, the dragonfly feeds on the fossil of an octopus in order to survive, but at the same time, it is held by it without the possibility to fly and get away from the Pyramid. The artist uses this image as a metaphor for the perennial man’s attempt to detach himself from a context imposed by society.

11’23” 4K film, 2021, Courtesy the Artist

This is the II Chapter of the trilogy: The Animals. Once Upon a Time … in a present Time. (2019 – 2022)

Trailer, Video, 1’03”

A fish is trapped in a net while trying to escape from a shark. The net is part of the architecture of a National Library of Kosovo. Zeneli asks a group of children to collaborate with him to work out how to release the fish from the net and escape from the shark. They play a game, and they succeed: together they compose a narrative that will make us perceive the brutalist architecture of the National Library as something we can transform into malleable matter and the nature of the fish like that of a bird. The young team are members Bonevet: a non-profit institution established in 2014 in Prishtina which considers technology as a method to learn science, understand life and increase imagination.
The film offers us a story where the art of being wise is entrusted to children and the architecture of the National Library in Kosovo becomes a network of possibilities which are there for all of us to imagine.

Seating in the middle of the University Campus, The National Library of Pristina, Kosovo is composed by a Brutalist architecture and holds inside different identities. The decision to build it was taken in the 1970 and since then, until its final version in 1981 – with the design of Croatian architect Andrija Mutnjaković – the building changed its name three times, for almost a decade it was transformed into a Serbian orthodox religious school, and then, during the NATO bombarding, the Jugoslav Army used it as a command and control centre. During the occupation, more than 100,000 books and rare volumes were stolen or burned. Most of the 600,000 volumes survived and are kept in the best means possible. The National Library is now opened to the public and used by the students and yet.

HD Video, 2019, 07’10”, color, sound.

This is the I Chapter of the trilogy: The Animals. Once Upon a Time … in a present Time. (2019 – 2022)

Trailer, Video, 1’32”

By creating the encounter between his friend Mario and the abandoned industrial area of Metallurgjik, Zeneli tells us how a rendez-vous between utopia and dystopia can look like.
Mario, is a man who has always had the passion to fly and build airplanes. Metallurgik is a place in Elbasan that hosts an abandoned factory with a surface of around 250 thousand hectares, where 12 thousand people used to work during the 70’s in Albania. Mario today has become the master for the assembling of flying machines and he has the persistent desire to reach a faraway place, in the outer space. Metallurgjik, on the other hand, emptied from its workers, exposes its ruins as a scientific proof of the failure of a project which was part of an ideal society, the one of Albanian communism.
It would not be possible to leave planet earth unless gravity existed is a work that encounters two desires: the one of an ideal society and the separation from it. Both, interdependent, could not survive without each other.

2017, HD Video, 16:9, color, audio, one channel, 13’43”

This is the I Chapter of the trilogy: Beneath a Surface there is just another surface (2017 -2019)

Trailer, Video, 1’01”

Second chapter of the Trilogy – When Dreams Become Necessity (2009-2014).

What is the most seductive promise of happiness cached behind a general condition of disenchantment?

When Dreams Become Necessity investigates the importance of some performative attempts with the aim of redefining the idea of failure, Utopia and dreams as foundational moments for building a possible alternative.

When Dreams Become Necessity is comprised of three videos: The Dream of Icarus Was to Make a Cloud (2009) is an attempt to create a cloud by flying with a paraglider; in Some Say the Moon is Easy to Touch… (2011) the artist launches himself in a bungee jump to touch the moon on the day this satellite is at the minimum distance from earth. In Don’t look at The Sun while you’re expecting to Cross it (2014) he decides to cross the sun after the Lovejoy comet passed through the perihelion in 2011, remaining intact.

In the three performative actions, as stated in the titles, the artist tries to reach objectives commonly perceived as impossible. The anticipation and the technical preparation occupy practically the entire length of each video, and come to a quick conclusion in attaining the goal and in the consequent rupture of the illusion. The imagination is not drained by the personal failure nor is it impoverished by the failures of science; rather, it accepts the challenges, opening itself up to reflection and to the research that can turn the promise into a commitment.

Some Say the Moon is easy to touch… HD Video, 2011, 05’15”, color, sound.

This is the II Chapter of the trilogy: When Dreams Become Necessity. (2009-2014)

the dream of Icarus was to make a cloud

Trailer, Video, 00’59”

Third chapter of the Trilogy – When Dreams Become Necessity (2009-2014).

What is the most seductive promise of happiness cached behind a general condition of disenchantment?

When Dreams Become Necessity investigates the importance of some performative attempts with the aim of redefining the idea of failure, Utopia and dreams as foundational moments for building a possible alternative.

When Dreams Become Necessity is comprised of three videos: The Dream of Icarus Was to Make a Cloud (2009) is an attempt to create a cloud by flying with a paraglider; in Some Say the Moon is Easy to Touch… (2011) the artist launches himself in a bungee jump to touch the moon on the day this satellite is at the minimum distance from earth. In Don’t look at The Sun while you’re expecting to Cross it (2014) he decides to cross the sun after the Lovejoy comet passed through the perihelion in 2011, remaining intact.

In the three performative actions, as stated in the titles, the artist tries to reach objectives commonly perceived as impossible. The anticipation and the technical preparation occupy practically the entire length of each video, and come to a quick conclusion in attaining the goal and in the consequent rupture of the illusion. The imagination is not drained by the personal failure nor is it impoverished by the failures of science; rather, it accepts the challenges, opening itself up to reflection and to the research that can turn the promise into a commitment.

Don’t look at The Sun while you’re expecting to Cross it, 2014. HD Video, 2014, 04’39” color, sound.

This is the III Chapter of the trilogy: When Dreams Become Necessity. (2009-2014)

Some say the moon is easy to touch… – 2011