Photo by Claude Gerber.
Edi Rama is the incumbent 33rd Prime Minister of Albania. Elected to office in 2013, he has since won a further two elections as leader of the Socialist Party of Albania, the only Albanian premier to ever have won three consecutive elections. In his youth, he trained as a painter and worked in Paris before entering politics. SLEEK’s Christian Bracht met with Edi Rama to discuss the power of creativity and the role art can play in politics.
SLEEK: It’s all about creativity, because we think creativity will solve so many problems we have in the world. Long before politics came into your life, art was already there; looking back, what was the most significant thing that art brought to it?
Edi Rama: I think the natural sense of looking comfortable, trying to see things differently, the insistence on making things differently, and, in one word, thinking and leave outside of the box; not all the time—because it’s impossible when you are in politics—but time after time, which is very healthy.
S: You went to Paris as a young man. Why?
ER: Actually, we didn’t really have much choice. First of all, I came to Berlin as a young man. Berlin was the first place I stayed for a while after having gotten out of the fringe of communism, where we were all squeezed. The combine was north core of Europe. Nobody could get out, nobody could get in. Our world was all about our own national state TV and forbidden books and forbidden music. When freedom came, I just wanted to travel to see the world, and this was of course based on what? Based on train stations. I could visit friends here, visit friends there, paint, sell, buy tickets, fly, and why not? I came to Berlin first and I was living there in 1991. It was the spring of 1991, and I’m living on the edge of the old divide, and I could see East Berlin and West Berlin, and it was a bit like Albania and the world. And then Paris. I went there because I won a fellowship. They wanted me.
S: The idea that art opens up—moves beyond—borders and frames…is this something that can be applied to politics, too?
ER: Yes, I think I think if governments and leaders and parliaments put aside more money from highways and other pieces of infrastructure and used it to fund the spiritual infrastructures of culture and art instead, the world would be a better place.
S: That’s right but it’s much easier said than done. What role could art have in politics?
ER: We should be careful there, because while art can help society, it should not be ‘told’ to do things, and it should not be transformed into a tool of propaganda. We have seen what happens when it is used like that. We know how it ends when governments and states use art as a tool for their own agenda. So it’s very tricky.
S: What power do you ascribe to art?
ER: Power and art cannot stop people from going crazy and doing crazy things. Art cannot stop climate change and all these sorts of problems. What art can do is give people the opportunity to live for a while in a different world and open their minds. But the arts cannot really save the world.
S: You were once a professional artist. Now you’re a politician. Which job requires more passion?
ER: Everything requires passion, for sure. What you do [Christian Bracht] requires passion, for sure. Even making coffee for people requires passion, and without passion you go nowhere. So passion is fundamental to every success and of every good thing that has ever been brought to life. Nevertheless, passion can be also destructive. Passion can also do bad things, but at the end of the day, you know, if you don’t have passion …it’s already very bad.
S: Would now be a good time for politics to become more passionate?
ER: You know, it’s not. It’s not a good time. I don’t know if there has ever been a good time, but eventually, with social media, and with the horizontalisation of leadership in the world, politics has become a synonym of something bad, something people don’t want to even talk about. But the reality is that politics is humanity’s greatest invention. Politics was born to help us do things together that cannot be done alone. Without politics, we would still be ‘in the woods’. So it depends whose hands political power falls into, and that’s why it’s important to participate. It’s important not to let politics fall into the hands of a small number of people because it’s an illusion to think that just because you don’t care about politics, that you are safe from it. Politics will always be in your life and politics will always define aspects of your life with or without your permission. So you better look into politics and you’d better participate and you’d better vote and you’d better say what you have to say, because at the end of the day you have to—you are the subject of politics and you will never escape from it.
S: I hear you still love to draw. What do you do with all your sketches, are you collecting them? Do you use them somehow?
ER: I did it in the very beginning because I couldn’t stand meetings. I couldn’t stand government meetings in the sense that I couldn’t concentrate and I couldn’t stand to see the time pass like that. So I was [sketching] all the time and it helped me concentrate and lower my stress. Then, without my intention, [these sketches] became public domain. Friends exposed them, exhibited some of them and the galleries were interested. Now, I’m exhibiting here in Berlin and America [in 2016 and 2019, Rama presented shows at New York’s Marian Goodman and Berlin’s Carlier Gebauer galleries respectively] and it has its own life. But I mean, I don’t do it thinking that it will be exhibited. My art is a bit like my prayer, my politics. It’s my fight.
As featured in SLEEK 73 – PASSION. Available in print and digital here.