Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

The Tirana Time Capsules are a series of three virtual environments, accessible via web browser, that act as time capsules for three different neighbourhoods of Tirana in 2021. The chosen areas - 21 Dhjetori, Kombinat, and the Teatri i Gjelbërimit, an area of the Tirana Great Park - each embody different aspects of Tirana’s urban development over the past 100 years. Particularly since the early 2000s, this has been characterised by the gradual disappearance of public space as the building sector has increasingly become controlled by private interests. Drawing on the metaphor of the time capsule and employing so-called high-fidelity recording techniques such as photogrammetry and field recording, the work re-appropriates and re-constitutes these different areas of the city as virtual environments as a way of exploring the intersection of personal memory and community heritage. In addition, the work seeks to question the promises made by such recording technologies that claim to render and preserve reality as a high-fidelity digital copy: in short, what exactly is being preserved when we use these techniques of digital preservation?

Alexander Walmsley (b. 1992) is a media artist with a particular interest in the landscapes of the real and the virtual. In his practice, he investigates how our understanding of these landscapes is shifting, mediated by the new technological, environmental and social realities of the 21st century. His work is situated primarily between 3D, photography, animation, and XR. His recent work has been shown at the Daejeon Biennale of Arts and Sciences, Tirana Art Lab, Sharjah Art Foundation, The Photographers' Gallery, and VRHam! Festival. He was a commissioned artist for the Albanian pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale and has taken part in residencies at the Tirana Art Lab, Albania, and Moskosel Creative Lab, Sweden, among others. Previously, he studied Anthropology and Archaeology at the Universities of Cambridge (UK) and Geneva (CH).