Cevdet Erek is an Istanbul based artist and musician. Contemplating and exploring rhythms, his work produces intense bodily experiences and establish provocative correlations between different temporalities and histories, forms and languages. Rilindja, an icon of brutalist architecture, was designed by Georgi Konstantinovski and built in the 1970s to host Kosovo’s first publishing house, where Yugoslavia’s Albanian-language newspaper, Rilindja, was published. In the decades that followed, it functioned as a site of both cultural enfranchisement and – with the breakdown of Yugoslavia – its antithesis. Erek’s intervention “Brutal Times” responds to the political turbulence underling the many shifts in Rilindja’s function, identity and appearance. Engaging with a now-abandoned section of the building, the artist draws out the temporalities embedded within the post-privatisation void: an architectural intervention that includes moving graphics, robot lights and multi-channel sounds, associated with the production process of the newspapers and techno music. Earlier this week, we were delighted to hear the news that the Ministry of Culture included this abandoned section of Rilindja within the list of protected monuments of Prishtina – a huge win for the reclaiming of public spaces! Join us there on the 21st of October, for the final edition of Manifesta Nights with Hapësira, where Erek himself will open the night with a live performance using the sounds of his intervention. Video ©️ Manifesta 14 Prishtina / Leart Rama Brutal Times,2022, ©️ Cevdet Erek. Photo ©️ Manifesta 14 Prishtina / Ivan Erofeev