Some individuals, of both sexes, who took an author's part in representing Montenegro - our mother - at this year's International Architecture Exhibition - Venice Biennale 2023 - the so-called Venetians - have been mercilessly filling my inbox, since last Saturday, on various topics - you wouldn't believe it - and if I had to single out a key moment - then it is certainly a kind of passive-aggressive resentment (resentment - resentment), which is spreading like a vicious virus among the author's team - prompted (allegedly, please) by the fact that the competent ministry - Mrs. Novaković Đurović's Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism, and immediately after Odović's Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property - did not (allegedly, did it) do anything to promote authors - first authors - and then their works which, until recently, were exhibited in the so-called the Montenegrin pavilion (in those three holes) in Venice...
And what to say? - and I haven't said it at least 10 times already. I don't even know how to react to the fact that, on the one hand, the authors are young - very young, very sweet - dissatisfied with the state's attitude towards them and their works in Venice - and on the other hand, no one should wonder whether is CG - our mother - satisfied with the way it was presented in Venice.
And I tried once again, at the address mirages.me (Laboratory of the future: Mirages (future) of Montenegro), to dig up any official information about the works by Stevke, the chief chat for arch. works, and curator Lazović presented Montenegro - our mother - at the XVIII Architecture Biennale...
And there is nothing, of course. Zero. There is something about the authors, I'm not saying - but about the works: NOTHING! There are no papers, there are none, then there are none... Zero.
I promised you a text about the Architecture Biennale, in general, and about Montenegro's presence at the Biennale, in detail - and I will write those texts, I promise you - but at the moment I have neither the time nor the strength to go into that issue, which is very complex in to his nature...
Aside from the fact that few Montenegrin architects - many young, many cute - are interested in the Architecture Biennale and our performance.
After all, fill Stevket's inbox with resentment, or Lazović's inbox, or Odović's inbox... They wonder. I don't wonder...
Elem, if anyone has a catalog of the CG installation at this year's Biennale, arch. in Venice - in PDF format - and if you could send me that catalog - I would be very grateful. As much as I am, in principle, over that episode - still the devil doesn't give me peace, apparently...
***
The superhuman efforts I've been putting in lately, if I didn't dig up the Decision (or Decision, or whatever...) by which Odović (allegedly) put salt on the back of investor Šaj, and regarding Šaj's intention to build a hotel right on the roundabout flow, at the former intersection of Meša Selimovića and Blaža Jovanovića streets in Podgorica - OK, if not exactly at the roundabout, then immediately above the roundabout at the junction of Block V and Block VI - did not bear fruit...
And now I don't know what to think about all that... And I can't help but think about it. It is about an episode - as comic as it is tragic - that provides unique and very direct insights, both into the state of affairs in the domains of spatial and urban planning in Montenegro - our mother - and into very obscure actions (procedures and processes) that result in interventions in to our, all of us dearest space.
“So why did we do this (why was salt put on Šaj's tail - op.a.)?", asks Minister Odović - so-called God from the machine - and continues. "First of all," says Odović, "we did this for the benefit of the residents of that part of Podgorica (thank you very much, our honorable Minister Odović, we will celebrate your name for as long as the world, the ages and Blocks V and VI - signed by: Citizens of Blocks V and VI in Podgorica - op.a.), but also due to the improvement of the quality of spatial planning documents..."
And now it is unclear, among many other things, in what way Odovićeva will do it Decision (which, I'll repeat, I didn't manage to dig up) lead to "improvement of the quality of spatial planning documents" - if in the context of the story about our shameful planning and our shameful urbanism, as well as our shameful planning and urban documents, we can even talk about some kind of quality - and not, for example, about the urgent need to introduce order in that incomprehensibly neglected and incomprehensibly irrational domain of our system, that is, our reality.
***
"Plans are not something that is perishable!" shouts Comrade Novica from there, president of the Professional Chamber of Architects at the Engineering Chamber of Montenegro, the second among us, right after the first - Comrade Stevket - the head of the company.
"Plans don't stop in the sense of a specific day," Comrade Novica continues, "they are made for a specific planning period, because again that planning period is linked to the needs of society, after a certain time the needs of society change, plans change and so on. ..”.
And no one to put a finger on the forehead...
***
Change everything, the Italians say, to change nothing: cambia tutto, per non cambiare niente. Italians also say that nothing changes, but everything changes: niente cambia, tutto cambia. And they say more: If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change - or in translation: if we want everything to remain as it is, everything needs to change.
Although, hand to heart, we must take into account the fact that Italians are a very complex nation, a very complex ethnic group - and their collective experience - their collective memory - regarding the so-called of the legal-administrative frameworks of the exercise/endure of power in the most diverse state constructs - reaching deep into the past - in contrast to our very thin experience/memory in those domains.
Aside from the fact that it was the Italians - the Florentines, specifically - who started the Renaissance - The Renaissance - rebirth - and introduced the good old world into the so-called the modern era (there are about five and a half, up to six centuries) - and if the Italians say: cambia tutto, per non cambiare niente - then we have to trust them.
Bonus video:
