Former Greek finance minister composes song for Albanian pavilion in Venice

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister, has written the lyrics for a song set to be performed as part of Albania’s contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale.

The song, which centres on the topic of migration, will form part of a showcase of “iso-polyphony” music sung by four folk groups on the subject. Mr Varoufakis is one of ten figures, among whom were poets, authors, artists and architects, asked to contribute lyrics on migration, which will be the main topic of the Albanian pavilion.

“In the text he tells his own story of being away from home and separated from his daughter, living far away from her. [...] In other cases, we have more general texts about migration, like the case of poet Etel Adnan, who retells the emotional side of being far from your loved-one,” said American architect, Simon Battisti, one of the curators of the Albanian pavilion.

The Albanian project for this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale is entitled I Have Left You the Mountain. It centres on the themes of places and loss, conveying displacement and migration through song.

“In the Architectural Biennale, you walk down the hallways and what you see are buildings and pictures of cities, but we just wanted for once to explore the emotional side of the physical phenomenon of displacement, which is very present in Albania,” Mr Battisti stated.

Source: Balkan Insight