CAA conference presentation; 109th CAA Annual Conference 2021

This is a story of the formation of a collective body in the form of material and human assemblage in a contact zone loaded with tension. It mushroomed in the very heart of Tirana, as a resistance for the protection of the historical building of the National Theater. The state institutions abandoned their role in safeguarding the public interest and partnered up with private parties to serve to the eagerness to grab and capitalize public land. This triggered a citizens’ movement to protect the historical theater building recognized by European partners in the field of cultural heritage, endangered by a Public Private Partnership that proposed its replacement with a new alien theater and luxurious towers designed by BIG. The humanmaterial collective body spontaneously started to host, promote, and generate protocols of mutual care, intra-action, communication, activating, and empowering unheard voices. Human bodies that anchored to the building protested peacefully through art, free speech, exhibitions, turning the protest into the only legitimate institution, and the building into a fortress of resistance. Unfortunately, the much-loved building, that triggered a more than two years long resistance, was demolished on May 17th, in an unprecedented shocking way, early in the morning at 4:00 am, the last day before the lockdown from the Pandemic would end. The act of the erasure of the theatre is a material expression of the rise of authoritarianism during Covid-19 times which generated affective relational resistance before and after it.