Albania: the women's story: "He came home and threatened to kill me with a pistol in front of the children, and the children protected me, came and stood in front of me and said, 'You have to kill us first'." This testimony, from a woman, aged 37, mother of two children, illustrates the legacy of Albania's cultural past and the effects of gun proliferation. Hundreds of thousands of Kalashnikovs, pistols and other weapons were looted from military and police depots as law and order broke down after the collapse of financial pyramid selling schemes in 1997. Despite successive collection programmes, some 200,000 illegal weapons still circulate among Albania's 3.3 million people. A recent survey found that more than one in 20 Albanian families had experienced an arms-related crime in the past year. Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
