LAUNCHING OF THE PROJECT “VISIONING OF INDUSTRIAL SPACES IN MITROVICA”

Today, the “Vision of Industrial Spaces of Mitrovica” project was launched at the National Library of Kosovo. The project aims to gather the narratives of 100 workers from Trepça, under the title “Memory of Trepça”, in order to document audio-visual materials that will be used to construct a missing narrative about the role and importance of Trepça during its development. The key objective of this project is to document the social memory of Trepça, as remembered by its miners and all other workers who have worked there. The mentor of the project, Arsim Canolli, emphasized the importance of this work, as the history of Trepça is still somewhat unknown to most people. Greta Avdyli, one of the researchers involved in the project, highlighted the importance of documenting history, as anything that is not documented is forgotten. She noted that these documentations will serve future generations who have little information about what happened in the past. The idea of the “Memory of Trepça” project, according to Avdyli, is that Trepça workers should not just be seen as workers, as they were much more than that. They represent a life, a culture, and a social development that has occurred in the mine and also in the offices of the Trepça complex. During the conference, 7Arte raised the need for the establishment of an industrial museum dedicated to the Trepça complex. Lulzim Hoti also expressed hope that, in collaboration with relevant institutions, they will publish these narratives in book volumes, and that this initiative will continue with further collection and documentation. This project is being implemented by 7Arte in collaboration with the Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Anthropology, under the mentorship of Arsim Canolli, and is supported by the Swiss Cooperation Office in Kosovo.