Damjan Kokalevski (Munich/Skopje): Reading the Archive: Skopje. Abandoned Histories as Critical Entries to the Present
Skopje has been in the recent media spotlight as an example of how a city transformed to legitimize and reinforce populist and nationalist power structures. In 2009 the former right-wing ruling party launched a grand project for a violent rebuilding of the city center, designed in a pseudo-neoclassical style, titled “Skopje 2014”. It aimed to connect the Macedonian people to their mythical roots, dating back to Alexander the Great, trying, at the same time, to make the city look more ‘European’. Since then, numerous new buildings and monuments have sprung up in an opaque and corrupt commission process, costing approximately 680 million euros. In parallel to this, the architectural heritage and expertise gained after the disastrous earthquake of 1963, thanks to an extensive reconstruction project led by the United Nations, is obscured, abandoned, or even destroyed.
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