NextGEN in Tirana

Mar 102 min read

I was invited to Tirana by the Karlspreis foundation to attend a conference for youth on EU enlargement - co-organised by the youth agency of Albania. The conference was held under the patronage of the Prime Minister, Edi Rama - who spoke on one of the panel dicussions, along with Martin Schulz (form EP president), Veronica Tsepkalo (representative of the Belarusian opposition) and Jürgen Linden (chairman of the Karlspreis Foundation).

I was invited to speak on the "Young Changemakers" panel.

I spoke about my project, 'The Future is Europe' which won the Charlemagne Youth Prize, my 'Brexiles' project and my current work as Youth Engagement Officer for the European Movement.

I also made some visualisations from the other panel discussions with the politicians.

We were also given a guided tour of the former communist dictator, Enver Hoxha's villa where we had lunch - a slightly surreal experience!

'Digital Perspective' Exhibition at the Pyramid of Tirana

I also visited the exhibition at the gallery in the Pyramid of Tirana. It was slightly difficult to understand all the works, since the descriptions were given in Albanian and Italian, so I tried to interpret the work from a purely visual perspective.

'Due to the Image (Gensis)', Alessandro Giannì - I liked this painting because of it's classical references whilst also reminding me of the mushed up faces which AI image generators usually create.

'Aftermoments (mother and Daughter)', Ledia Kostandini - this pixelated textiles image of a mother and daughter was my favourite work in the exhibition. I love work that domesticises the digital and I thought the way the image was created from small patches of fabric was really clever and effective.