Albania

Maybe the cosmos is not so extraordinary by Driant Zeneli is a sculptural video installation whose title derives from the science fiction novel On the Way to Epsilon Eridani (1983) by Albanian writer Arion Hysenbegas.
The installation develops from a two-channel film set in the mines of Bulqize, a city in the north-east of the country where, since 1918, the chrome mineral has been extracted. The film stages a group of teenagers discovering a cosmic capsule which follows the journey of chrome, from its extraction and processing inside the factory to its exportation and worldwide exploitation. This ‘geopolitical’ space travel thus turns this shady and dramatic industrial environment into an ambivalent space for collapse and takeoff.