For its fourteenth edition, Manifesta is taking place in the Western Balkans, in Kosovo’s capital Prishtina. Manifesta was invited to reclaim public space for the citizens of Prishtina, to rethink an alternative model for an interdisciplinary institution and to revitalise a post-industrial site in the city. Manifesta believes in creating sustainable legacies in a changing society and so Manifesta 14 aims to seek new ways of storytelling within the social, ecological and urban environment.

We are happy to announce Australian, Berlin-based Catherine Nichols as the Creative Mediator for the upcoming edition of Manifesta, starting in July 2022.

Revolving around an emergent Centre for Narrative Practice, which will be located at the Hivzi Sylejmani Library, the numerous locations of multidisciplinary learning and artistic intervention aim to show that storytelling is no mere matter of historiography.

In collaboration with an international and local team, Manifesta 14 Prishtina will examine how crucial storytelling is to our collective survival.

“When I visited Prishtina, the people I encountered, the conversations I had, the work I witnessed gave me a palpable sense of the transformative power that lies in stories and in the act, in the practice of storytelling itself. Here you can really feel that it’s storytelling that brings into being the public realm: the space between you and me. I am delighted at the prospect of joining the Manifesta 14 team in bringing together artists, thinkers, scientists and citizens from all over Europe and beyond to explore how storytelling might enable us to engage with one another and, in our inherent plurality, to act in concert, to bring forth a more-than-human common world.” Catherine Nichols, Creative Mediator Manifesta 14 Prishtina

Manifesta 14 Prishtina is focused on creating, together with local and regional communities, alternative models of social-cultural, urban and artistic engagement. In addition to this, Manifesta 14 will present artistic interventions throughout public space which all can visit during our 100-day biennial programme from the 22nd of July until the 30th of October 2022.

The newly appointed Nichols will work closely with architect Carlo Ratti, who has developed a vision for participatory urbanism in the city of Prishtina.