Erëmirë Krasniqi

Looking back, what did you most enjoy about your time at Bard College Berlin/what had the biggest impact on you while studying at Bard College Berlin?

I came to Bard College Berlin in 2009, a year after Kosovo gained independence and ten years after the end of the war. Given the many societal transitions at the time, the academic training I had previously received was understandably at an unsatisfactory level. Additionally, arts and humanities were not highly valued disciplines, as society was largely focused on survival. Coming from a war-torn country, BCB played a crucial role in helping me rebuild my value system and provided a sense of stability and continuity. It encouraged me to pursue my interests in art, literature, and philosophy, making me a more attentive reader of both text and image. Furthermore, recognizing how these intellectual traditions intersect and complement each other not only made my approach to problems more interdisciplinary but also allowed me to view the world as more interconnected rather than a fragmented place.

How would you describe, in a nutshell, the experience of studying at BCB?

Overall, it was a beautiful and uplifting experience. It was at BCB that I realized how closely acquiring knowledge is tied to happiness.

Write briefly about one of your courses that left a lasting impression on you.

The curriculum largely centred on key texts from Western intellectual history, beginning with Plato and ending with Derrida. In the middle of this journey, during my second year, I took a course on Wittgenstein on Culture and Value. Wittgenstein, with his reflexive approach questioning the limits of the discipline, presumably so, marked the end of philosophy at the turn of the 20th century. This course had a profound impact on me, making me more pragmatic and decisive by teaching me the value of constructive and strategic silence. As Wittgenstein famously said, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," highlighting the importance of not basing philosophical questions on false premises, as they can lead to false philosophical problems.

How has BCB influenced the path you've taken since completing the program?

I went on to pursue a degree in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College in the US, largely influenced by the Literature courses I took at BCB, as well as the third year I spent studying Cultural Studies at Trent University, which BCB generously supported this year of self-discovery, giving us full autonomy to design our own educational experience.

When I joined a team of researchers of different generations and backgrounds in further building the oral history archive, I remembered that many of the foundational texts we read at BCB were originally oral dialogues or literatures that weren’t written down, and that instilled in me a deep appreciation for oral sources and the importance of building digital infrastructure to preserve them.

When it comes to Art courses I took at BCB, this influence is evident in my work as an art writer, where I’ve contributed to global art magazines like Frieze and Artforum among others. The knowledge I gained from courses such as Values of Renaissance Florence, Representation, What is Modern Art?, and Aesthetic Categories had trained me to have a sustained focus on works of art and taught me to build and identify multiple layers when reading and writing about them. I still deeply miss Geoff Lehman’s courses, but also trips to Florence, where we spent entire sessions with him analysing paintings in the context of the period texts we had read.

Where are you now and what are you doing?

I am currently based in Pristina, Kosovo, where I have spent the past seven years leading the Oral History Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a publicly accessible and searchable multilingual digital “living archive.” The oral history archive contains thousands of hours of life stories, capturing diverse experiences of people from different walks of life across Kosovo. My work during this time has focused on engaging with local histories, particularly those that have left behind few or no tangible traces. By collecting testimonies, I've sought not only to understand these lived experiences but also to narrate a collective history that celebrates shared authority and that goes beyond ideologically-driven narratives, thereby addressing the long silences in academic discourse.

My work lies at the intersection of memory studies, contemporary art, and curatorial practice. While building an oral history archive, I developed an interest in giving these stories a spatial dimension. I conceive exhibitions as narrative environments that offer a platform for reexamining local histories—whether written official histories or culturally ingrained narratives. When narrative exhibitions visually represent and engage with contemporary history, they become arenas for discussion, imagination, and the exploration of inhabitable worlds that reside between personal memory and public history.

Most recently, I curated the Kosovo Pavilion at the 60th edition of the International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia. This curatorial project also dealt with under the radar histories of labour and explored less visible subjects of history. Under my curation, Kosovo received its first-ever Special Mention for National Participation, marking a significant achievement. While Kosovo had strong presentations at previous editions of the Biennale, this was the first time we received an acknowledgment, and that was a major milestone for our local art scene on such a prestigious platform.

Any advice you would give to students considering BCB?

The liberal arts education at BCB did not specifically prepare me for a particular career or job market. Instead, through its thematically designed courses, it focused on helping me discover my niche as a thinker and practitioner within the context of my own life and work. In these times of polycrisis, I believe this approach is invaluable as it taught me to embrace uncertainty and transform it into a learning process. From my experience, unresolved questions that initially don’t fit into my thought system often gain depth and significance as perspectives shift and these questions become connected to other webs of meaning. BCB equips you to handle uncertainty (even when the world seems utterly confusing) by fostering your capacity for independent and interdisciplinary thinking. This, in turn, offers significant flexibility and adaptability in any job market. But, ultimately, BCB freed me from the basic concerns of job-seeking and guided me toward finding meaning and purpose in my work.