“E.E Mastlorin” is a phantasy persona that comes out from the collaboration of Eni Derhemi & Elvis Hoxhaj, lifelong friends and creators of this video-poetry while being in lockdown during March 2020: Eni in Tirana, Albania and Elvis in The Hague, Netherlands. The video comes as an attempt to find a new balance or consensus in a time which challenges the common paradigm of communication. Thus, a new language is created, something in between two genres of expression, but at the same time a completely new entity which merges from the intersection of poetry and theory. Is it possible to let aside the cacophony and come together in perfect unison? Is it possible for the internet to be the utopia of the complete immaterial encounters? Can we meet in the middle? The video raises questions about important common thoughts that we all have been through as a society during the year 2020, and the approach becomes universal. It starts from the relationship of two people, which try to overpass its limits and by doing so create a kind of digital performance. Poetry though, remains the main performer of this whole process.
Eni Derhemi graduates at the Master of Visual Arts at the University of Bologna, Italy, with a focus on History of Contemporary Art and with a thesis on post-90’s Albanian Art influenced by post-dictatorship and migration; two phenomena she’s experienced in first person. Coming from such a background, Eni is interested in thematics such as home, memory and at the same time nomadic existence. Her inspiration comes from poetry, not only in written form but in any kind of form; with her artistic research she tries to unfold the poetry hiding in everything. She regularly writes poetry, creates visual poems and works with the medium of video-poetry.
Elvis Hoxhaj is an activist for LGBTIQA+, a psychologist in training and a researcher of Gender Studies in Utrecht University, Netherlands. He’s also a queer art collector/organizer with a passion for perfume making. Elvis is interested in thinking, considering, exploring the ways through which communities come together, communicate and express themselves as a collective action.
