A close look into practices, rituals, communities, the mystic and everyday spaces that defined our past and how we live today
The eighth edition of the Heritage Space Fellowship brings together researchers, artists, and cultural practitioners whose projects reimagine cultural memory through film, research, storytelling, and multidisciplinary art. This is the first cohort to take part in the newly established two-year programme, a shift that allows for deeper engagement with the selected projects and reflects Heritage Space’s commitment to sustained processes of research, production, and mentorship.
The 2025 fellows are now concluding the production phase, looking ahead to 2026 as the year of public presentation for projects addressing themes that cut across the intimate and the collective, the visible and the overlooked. From the mountain pastures of Isniq, where Çlirimtare Januzaj and Urtesë Zeneli trace the rhythms of transhumance, to Eljesa Beka that revisits radio practises from the 90s to find sites of intimacy and resistance. Elton Ferati turns to the shifting meanings of marriage during wartime, while Diona Kusari and Likana Cana probe the invisible threads of belief, folklore, witchery, and mysticism that shape collective imagination. Berna Kosova amplifies the often-overlooked voices of Kosovo’s Turkish community, and Tesa Kabashi with Enis Bytyqi map restaurants and bakeries as living archives of Prishtina. Together, these projects affirm heritage as a presence in practices, rituals, and everyday spaces that define how we live.
Mentorship remains at the core of the fellowship. Kosovo film director Kaltrina Krasniqi, who has guided fellows for the past two editions, describes her approach:
“My artistic practice is deeply intertwined with research. It’s through the solitude of this process that I’ve come to engage more meaningfully in broader conversations locally and internationally. Serving as a mentor for the past two editions of the Heritage Space Fellowship Program has been a playful and eye-opening exercise in the art of exchange - one that introduced me to a range of compelling minds and diverse artistic and research practices. These encounters led me to unexpected places of reading, reflection, and intergenerational dialogue around both the tangible and intangible aspects of how we relate and contextualize the past. For me, Heritage Space is more than a platform - it’s a living, evolving community committed to surfacing historically overlooked narratives of people, places, rituals, and cultures. Through the program - individually and in groups - we continue to explore how best to engage with and respond to complex stories, which have traditionally persisted outside dominant political and social discourse - yet are central to how we frame, speak and shape our eternally shifting understanding of one another.”
Alongside Kaltrina Krasniqi, artist and art historian Zef Paci joins as mentor, bringing his long experience in visual arts and curatorial practice to guide the fellows in expanding their methodologies and deepening their engagement with heritage.
MEET THE FELLOWS OF EDITION VIII AND UNDERSTAND THEIR PROCESS
Çirimtare Januzaj & Urtesë Zeneli
Through an ethnographic film set in the highlands of Isniq, Januzaj and Zeneli follow a family’s seasonal migration to document one of humanity’s earliest ways of life: pastoral nomadism. Their project captures daily rhythms, intergenerational rituals, and the fragile balance between people, animals, and landscape. By immersing themselves in the community, they seek to reveal how collective memory is sustained through tradition, and how mountain life embodies resilience and sustainability.
Moving Forward: They will now review and edit their filmed material, working closely with anthropologists and mentors to shape the narrative and rhythm of their documentary.
Eljesa Beka
Beka’s project explores the history of greetings and dedications broadcast on Kosovo’s radio stations, particularly during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. These seemingly simple exchanges, songs requested, and voice messages, emerge as powerful spaces of connection, resistance, and self-expression under occupation and beyond. Through interviews with listeners and cultural workers, Beka is reconstructing a sonic archive that highlights radio as both deeply emotional and profoundly political.
Moving Forward: She is preparing a radio documentary accompanied by a short book that will bring together voices, music, and analysis of this overlooked soundscape.
Tesa Kabashi & Enis Bytyqi
Kabashi and Bytyqi turn their attention to Prishtina’s food spaces: restaurants, bakeries, sweet shops, and eateries, reframing them as living archives of social memory and cultural identity. By collecting oral histories, archival traces, and photographs, their project explores how everyday sites of consumption become markers of belonging and urban identity. Their forthcoming publication will blend ethnographic documentation with a visual design identity, highlighting food as a vessel of memory and community.
Moving Forward: They will synthesize their materials and photography into a book that captures these spaces as cultural landmarks of the city.
Elton Ferati
Ferati investigates the shifting meanings of marriage during the 1998–1999 war in Kosovo. Drawing from personal testimonies, photographs, and critical theory, he examines marriage not only as a historically restrictive institution but also as a space of meaning-making in times of uncertainty and violence. By combining oral histories with feminist and postcolonial analysis, his work challenges conventional understandings of love, ritual, and resilience in conflict.
Moving Forward: He will continue to transcribe interviews, refine his analysis, and develop a manuscript that weaves these narratives into a coherent whole.
Diona Kusari & Likana Cana
In their project “The Invisible Thread of Faith” Kusari and Cana trace the intersections of magic, folklore, and healing practices through a feminist and psychoanalytic lens. Their forthcoming publication investigates superstition, myth, and the figure of the witch, while also engaging with contemporary voices through interviews, surveys, and participatory rituals. The result is both an archival and artistic exploration that brings hidden beliefs to light, reimagined in collective and interactive forms.
Moving Forward: Developing a book that catalogues local magical and healing practices based on interviews with practitioners, interpreting their meanings through feminist and psychoanalytic perspectives.
Berna Kosova
Kosova’s work focuses on the lived experiences of Kosovo’s Turkish community, often marginalized and overlooked. Through personal interviews, she documents memories, challenges, and ways this community has sustained its identity across generations. By combining storytelling with visual elements, including illustrations of her interlocutors, Kosova aims to amplify rarely heard voices and ensure their stories become part of Kosovo’s broader cultural narrative.
Moving Forward: She will curate the most representative stories and pair them with visual portraits, shaping them into a narrative publication.
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