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Ho visto un paese bianco bianco bianco

Our research, in collaboration with the Department of Eagles, addressed the relationship between Italy and Albania by focusing on their radio and television system and on the kanoçe ("cans"), aluminum objects used to reach out for Italian TV frequencies or to empower aerials' reception. Starting from this perspective, the project has been developed through a series of meetings with people – different in age, opinions, and proximity to the former Party – and, simultaneously, by looking into the archives of Agjencia Telegrafike Shqiptare, Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror i Filmit and Biblioteka Kombëtare e Shqipërisë in Tirana. We presented the partial result of our residency at Logu i Shkëndijës during Tregime Minore / Minor Narratives, a talk in collaboration with PhD candidate Nicola Pedrazzi and philologist Vincent van Gerven Oei. The different interventions brought to the surface the exchanges between Italy and Albania under Hoxha’s dictatorship. In fact, even though there was no evident communication between the two countries during the Communist era, it is possible to trace a map of their hidden connections by looking at minor episodes, poorly studied by the official historiography, like the one of the Italian soldiers that fought Fascism alongside the Albanian partisans (Nicola Pedrazzi), whose actions and names are sealed into the lapidars spread all over the country – monuments that have been recently archived in a photographic project by Vincent Van Gerven Oei and Marco Mazzi for the Deparment of Eagles. Our intervention Ho visto un paese bianco bianco bianco, instead, sketched the history of these small metal devices, the kanoçe, outlining the political climate in which they were created, their technical details and what kind of programs and contents could be seen through them, asking, also, what was the role they played in Communist Albania. [vc_separator type='normal' position='center' color='' thickness='' up='' down=''] (The following text was written during our staying in Tirana. It is not to be considered as a proper essay but, instead, as a collection of doubts, questions and ideas we went through while developing our research. Each section, by unfolding the same narration from a different point of view, propose a take on kanaçe, on its history and on the meanings entangled in it.)