Issue 04
09/26
As we publish Gazeta 04 in the midst of a particularly warm summer, our bodies remind us of something we so often forget: that even within the most artificial of environments, we remain an inseparable part of nature. And in this communion, we are reminded of what we are: sensitive, responsive, and vulnerable creatures.
Over the past year, we have come together in the tradition of Potpuri, to shape another edition of Gazeta collectively. From Prishtina, Gjakova, and Gadime in Kosova to Lugano, Basel, Bern, Zurich, and Lausanne in Switzerland, we have met across cities, borders, screens, and physical spaces. Digitally and physically, we have continued to find one another through our shared urgencies, questions, and experiences.
What summons us this time is not only an idea, a place, or a publication, but something more elemental: the body. Therefore, in this edition of the Gazeta, we attempt to address that ever-growing urgency: the need to re-encounter our ‘true nature’, to find anew, see with a set of fresh eyes, what our bodies know too well.
As subjects shaped and educated within Western systems of knowledge production and consumption, we have unwittingly inherited an alienation from our most intimate carnal experiences. We have been taught to observe, discipline, categorize, and too often suppress what is felt, sensed, and lived spontaneously in the body. Academic institutions, cultural structures, family values, and systems of capital have often forcibly dictated what kinds of bodily experiences are allowed to be recognized, valued, or shared, on the basis that they can lend themselves to translation into something productive or digestible.
With this edition of the Gazeta we wished to carve an intimate space: one where our bodily experiences could be apprehended viscerally—before they are conceptualized into a theory, or a commodity. A liminal space where the body could speak in its own language, through memory, sensation, vulnerability, pleasure, discomfort, movement, presence, and everything that cannot easily be named. Potpuri then becomes a practice of gathering these suppressed experiences, not to make them legibile necessarily, but as an act of opening and hearing the ways that the body knows. To the modern alienated self, it is a return to, and a remembrance of the knowledge that we inherit through genealogy. The adaptation and evolution of not just our corporeality, but that which evades it. To go beyond the separation of body and mind, toward the web of relations our bodies weave with other creatures, and with the nonsensuous world around us is to understand the body as a perpetual site of inter-subjectivity, or more simply: as an act of becoming. It is a generative return to something both simple and profound: we are never entirely singular. We are, at all times, collective creatures, shaped through relationships, histories, environments, and encounters. The body is not merely the vessel through which we experience the world; it is the living channel through which the collective is present within the distinctive.
And because the printed page continues to privilege the written word, we wanted this edition to make space for other ways of expressing what the body knows. Through a mosaic of genres and formats, we have tried not to make everything legible, but to let some things remain felt.
As subjects shaped and educated within Western systems of knowledge production and consumption, we have unwittingly inherited an alienation from our most intimate carnal experiences. We have been taught to observe, discipline, categorize, and too often suppress what is felt, sensed, and lived spontaneously in the body. Academic institutions, cultural structures, family values, and systems of capital have often forcibly dictated what kinds of bodily experiences are allowed to be recognized, valued, or shared, on the basis that they can lend themselves to translation into something productive or digestible.
With this edition of the Gazeta we wished to carve an intimate space: one where our bodily experiences could be apprehended viscerally—before they are conceptualized into a theory, or a commodity. A liminal space where the body could speak in its own language, through memory, sensation, vulnerability, pleasure, discomfort, movement, presence, and everything that cannot easily be named. Potpuri then becomes a practice of gathering these suppressed experiences, not to make them legibile necessarily, but as an act of opening and hearing the ways that the body knows. To the modern alienated self, it is a return to, and a remembrance of the knowledge that we inherit through genealogy. The adaptation and evolution of not just our corporeality, but that which evades it. To go beyond the separation of body and mind, toward the web of relations our bodies weave with other creatures, and with the nonsensuous world around us is to understand the body as a perpetual site of inter-subjectivity, or more simply: as an act of becoming. It is a generative return to something both simple and profound: we are never entirely singular. We are, at all times, collective creatures, shaped through relationships, histories, environments, and encounters. The body is not merely the vessel through which we experience the world; it is the living channel through which the collective is present within the distinctive.
And because the printed page continues to privilege the written word, we wanted this edition to make space for other ways of expressing what the body knows. Through a mosaic of genres and formats, we have tried not to make everything legible, but to let some things remain felt.
with Contributions from:
Elisa Maxhuni, Vlera Zejnullahi, Adelina Ismaili, Mjelma Shehu, Njomza Dragusha, Edona Krraba, Elisa Maxhuni, Mara Djukaric, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Anastasiia Tatarenko, Ardita Avdija, Besa Ferati, Aurela Berila, Vio, Ludwig Lederer, Vardon Hamdiu, Xhemile Asani, Diona Kusari, Donika Gashi, Xhemile Asani, Gresa Shehu, Mercedes Sabels, Endrit Tasholli
Elisa Maxhuni, Vlera Zejnullahi, Adelina Ismaili, Mjelma Shehu, Njomza Dragusha, Edona Krraba, Elisa Maxhuni, Mara Djukaric, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Anastasiia Tatarenko, Ardita Avdija, Besa Ferati, Aurela Berila, Vio, Ludwig Lederer, Vardon Hamdiu, Xhemile Asani, Diona Kusari, Donika Gashi, Xhemile Asani, Gresa Shehu, Mercedes Sabels, Endrit Tasholli
Issue 03
05/25
A string of words, a stream of thoughts and a form of togetherness.
Strangely, even in times of crisis—in the face of streamed genocide, planetary collapse, and the rise of fascism—we have managed, from time to time, to keep ourselves hopeful. We’ve done this by maintaining Potpuri as a collective spirit, an initiative that allows us to hold on to hope, to recognize one another, and to create space where the heart can be put on paper. It is also a space where frustration becomes real and visible. And above all, the work we do here—entirely voluntarily—is a privilege we do have.
This third edition of Potpuri is, at the very least, a special one for us. It crystallizes our efforts to run Potpuri entirely as a collective, a self-organized initiative, involving actively twenty-eight people across countries. After parting ways with the institution where Potpuri was first initiated—Zurich University of the Arts—we chose to continue without a clear plan for financial sustainability, fully aware of the high costs of printing. Following this departure, our team in Switzerland formalized its presence by founding its own association, Nafakë, while in Kosovo, Termokiss continued to hold us the ground.
True to Potpuri’s spirit, we once again opened our hearts to new contributors. In September 2024, we issued public calls, inviting anyone interested to join this labor of love for writing and sharing. As a result, fourteen new contributors joined to co-create this edition: Potpuri: Gazeta 03.
As we moved between hybrid spaces—glowing digital windows and in-person murmurs—the Potpuri Lab became our ground of gathering, where a collective pulse shaped this edition of Gazeta—both as a printed form and an archive of experience. Over six months, in patient threads of shared labor and solitude, more than 27 contributions—individual and collaborative—took form, stitched together by care, distance, urgency, and deep listening.
As always, our contributions remain fiercely personal. Potpuri, in its essence, has stayed an intimate constellation—where vulnerability is welcomed and reflection is a necessity. Yet nothing we do is ever apolitical. The very act of choosing to be part of Potpuri, to write, to join, to speak from the margins—is a political stance. Whether writing about astrological charts or the press, name changes or migrations, architecture or racism, language or silence, poetry or patriarchy, sound or family—every line echoes with urgency. Even the pages made for children, the crosswords, the laughter—they too are a kind of resistance. Nevertheless, in the urgency of the world we witness today, Potpuri may seem like a drop in the vastness—but for us, it is a space to cope, a space to heal, so we may rise again and meet life as it comes—whole, fractured, tender, and unrelenting.
In this one issue, all of it exists—without hierarchy, without permission—woven together in a patchwork that holds space for joy, complexity, contradiction, and togetherness.
Strangely, even in times of crisis—in the face of streamed genocide, planetary collapse, and the rise of fascism—we have managed, from time to time, to keep ourselves hopeful. We’ve done this by maintaining Potpuri as a collective spirit, an initiative that allows us to hold on to hope, to recognize one another, and to create space where the heart can be put on paper. It is also a space where frustration becomes real and visible. And above all, the work we do here—entirely voluntarily—is a privilege we do have.
This third edition of Potpuri is, at the very least, a special one for us. It crystallizes our efforts to run Potpuri entirely as a collective, a self-organized initiative, involving actively twenty-eight people across countries. After parting ways with the institution where Potpuri was first initiated—Zurich University of the Arts—we chose to continue without a clear plan for financial sustainability, fully aware of the high costs of printing. Following this departure, our team in Switzerland formalized its presence by founding its own association, Nafakë, while in Kosovo, Termokiss continued to hold us the ground.
True to Potpuri’s spirit, we once again opened our hearts to new contributors. In September 2024, we issued public calls, inviting anyone interested to join this labor of love for writing and sharing. As a result, fourteen new contributors joined to co-create this edition: Potpuri: Gazeta 03.
As we moved between hybrid spaces—glowing digital windows and in-person murmurs—the Potpuri Lab became our ground of gathering, where a collective pulse shaped this edition of Gazeta—both as a printed form and an archive of experience. Over six months, in patient threads of shared labor and solitude, more than 27 contributions—individual and collaborative—took form, stitched together by care, distance, urgency, and deep listening.
As always, our contributions remain fiercely personal. Potpuri, in its essence, has stayed an intimate constellation—where vulnerability is welcomed and reflection is a necessity. Yet nothing we do is ever apolitical. The very act of choosing to be part of Potpuri, to write, to join, to speak from the margins—is a political stance. Whether writing about astrological charts or the press, name changes or migrations, architecture or racism, language or silence, poetry or patriarchy, sound or family—every line echoes with urgency. Even the pages made for children, the crosswords, the laughter—they too are a kind of resistance. Nevertheless, in the urgency of the world we witness today, Potpuri may seem like a drop in the vastness—but for us, it is a space to cope, a space to heal, so we may rise again and meet life as it comes—whole, fractured, tender, and unrelenting.
In this one issue, all of it exists—without hierarchy, without permission—woven together in a patchwork that holds space for joy, complexity, contradiction, and togetherness.
with Contributions from:
Adelina Ismaili, Amalia Koleka, Anastasiia Tatarenko, Ardita Avdija, Besa Ferati, Christian Gieben, Diona Kusari, Drin Çeku, ERN, Egor Tatarenko, Era Qena, Gëzim Thaçi, Leonita Galica (Catot), Ludwig Lederer, Manushaqe Ibrahimi, Mara Djukarić, Melisa Muhtari, Njomza Dragusha, Nol Gashi, Nora Tahiraj, Roni Idrizaj, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Shpat Shkodra, Toska Salihu, Urata Goska, Xhemile Asani, Xhenisa Demiri
Adelina Ismaili, Amalia Koleka, Anastasiia Tatarenko, Ardita Avdija, Besa Ferati, Christian Gieben, Diona Kusari, Drin Çeku, ERN, Egor Tatarenko, Era Qena, Gëzim Thaçi, Leonita Galica (Catot), Ludwig Lederer, Manushaqe Ibrahimi, Mara Djukarić, Melisa Muhtari, Njomza Dragusha, Nol Gashi, Nora Tahiraj, Roni Idrizaj, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Shpat Shkodra, Toska Salihu, Urata Goska, Xhemile Asani, Xhenisa Demiri
Issue 02
02/24
Potpuri is back! Potpuri continues!
Taking it upon ourselves to carve out a space for free-thinking and wildly tamed expression, independent of second-or-third-interest parties, and free from the tyranny of commerce, we continue to offer our variety of brain food. In over a year, the Potpuri Collective has deepened the roots (principles, values, ideas, aims) of working collectively to sustain a publishing platform that is self-run and handmade.
Facing the undercurrents of financial precarity and the culture of urgency, we bring you Potpuri: Gazeta 02, a labor of love. Through a long process-oriented work in an attempt to reach peripheral voices and to support a culture of independent self-publishing, we have deconstructed labor, identity, memory, and personal and social urgencies.
In doing so, we have created a space for our contributors to become agents of social change through learning to fuse pieces of knowledge, pasts, futures, and dreams in a room full of radical differences.
Throughout this process, of shocks and shifts, we have found ourselves in various common quests for freedom, be that individual or collective. We have found ourselves trying to deconstruct, unlearn, understand, not judge, be vulnerable in moments of intimacy or to be compassionate in moments of honesty, to share and listen to what gives us pain, joy, nostalgia, or grief.
While putting all this work into print we try to support a culture of mindfulness, tactility, and slowness in engaging with one’s work as opposed to the attention economy which tries to capitalize and profit off of our capacity for reflection, activism, and pleasure/joy altogether.
In the true spirit of Potpuri, in this edition, you'll encounter physical, temporal, and emotional transitions, never premeditated but rather organically blooming around shared themes of migration, displacement, the pursuit of a better life, and overarching non-linearity.
Potpuri is produced through the collective effort of dozens of people between Kosovo and Switzerland, aiming at representing their stories and the stories of underrepresented groups. It is the voluntary labor of these people that makes this work possible.
If you enjoy this newspaper, consider supporting us by becoming our reader, criticizer, friend, or distant angel who can afford to give us the pleasure of writing and reflecting rather than fundraising and begging.
Taking it upon ourselves to carve out a space for free-thinking and wildly tamed expression, independent of second-or-third-interest parties, and free from the tyranny of commerce, we continue to offer our variety of brain food. In over a year, the Potpuri Collective has deepened the roots (principles, values, ideas, aims) of working collectively to sustain a publishing platform that is self-run and handmade.
Facing the undercurrents of financial precarity and the culture of urgency, we bring you Potpuri: Gazeta 02, a labor of love. Through a long process-oriented work in an attempt to reach peripheral voices and to support a culture of independent self-publishing, we have deconstructed labor, identity, memory, and personal and social urgencies.
In doing so, we have created a space for our contributors to become agents of social change through learning to fuse pieces of knowledge, pasts, futures, and dreams in a room full of radical differences.
Throughout this process, of shocks and shifts, we have found ourselves in various common quests for freedom, be that individual or collective. We have found ourselves trying to deconstruct, unlearn, understand, not judge, be vulnerable in moments of intimacy or to be compassionate in moments of honesty, to share and listen to what gives us pain, joy, nostalgia, or grief.
While putting all this work into print we try to support a culture of mindfulness, tactility, and slowness in engaging with one’s work as opposed to the attention economy which tries to capitalize and profit off of our capacity for reflection, activism, and pleasure/joy altogether.
In the true spirit of Potpuri, in this edition, you'll encounter physical, temporal, and emotional transitions, never premeditated but rather organically blooming around shared themes of migration, displacement, the pursuit of a better life, and overarching non-linearity.
Potpuri is produced through the collective effort of dozens of people between Kosovo and Switzerland, aiming at representing their stories and the stories of underrepresented groups. It is the voluntary labor of these people that makes this work possible.
If you enjoy this newspaper, consider supporting us by becoming our reader, criticizer, friend, or distant angel who can afford to give us the pleasure of writing and reflecting rather than fundraising and begging.
with Contributions from:
Ardita Avdija, Caroline Baur, Aurela Berila, Anna Bertram, Mara Djukarić, Njomza Dragusha, Shpat Ejupi, Micol Favini, Nicole Frei, Christiaan Gieben, Roni Idrizaj, Adelina Ismaili, Diona Kusari, Ludwig Lederer, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Dea PIlana, Era Qena, Delnia Rahimzadegan, Jan Reimann, Basil Rogger, Toska Salihu, Shpat Shkodra, Endrit Tasholli, Anastasia Tatarenko, Egor Tatarenko
Ardita Avdija, Caroline Baur, Aurela Berila, Anna Bertram, Mara Djukarić, Njomza Dragusha, Shpat Ejupi, Micol Favini, Nicole Frei, Christiaan Gieben, Roni Idrizaj, Adelina Ismaili, Diona Kusari, Ludwig Lederer, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Dea PIlana, Era Qena, Delnia Rahimzadegan, Jan Reimann, Basil Rogger, Toska Salihu, Shpat Shkodra, Endrit Tasholli, Anastasia Tatarenko, Egor Tatarenko
Issue 01
09/22
Holding Potpuri in your hands can be many things. A mixture of spices, tickling your senses with its strong smell. A playlist that won’t leave your ear — or a conglomeration of tastes and experiences caught up somewhere on the way between Prishtina and Zurich.
The conceptualisation of this project started in October 2021 with the intention to provide a platform (online and physical) which is accessible for and addresses various ages and groups and different urgencies. With some of these common urgencies being: the breaking of the elitist approach to meaning, knowledge and cultural production in Kosovo; the formalisation of everyday topics which burden us commonly but we don’t share platforms where we feel heard; or the approach of our formal educational system which limits our need to learn and experiment; or even the nostalgia for the qualitative production of newspapers which we can’t encounter anymore in Kosovo.
With various individuals contributing to this initial print, we are taking the first step with the intention to create a recurring platform for publishing and sharing. A platform that doesn’t remain restricted by the precarity that surrounds the cultural and funding system in Kosovo, but that continues finding ways to reflect and reformulate our own practices on writing and documenting through cheap but qualitative, DIT (do it together), and freeful ways.
Potpuri invites the reader to, at one point, become its co-creator. It invites the contributor to transmit knowledge, to remain open and transform within topics and questions, resources and tools which the surrounding can provide. Its claim is to be loved or liked by a diverse public and fulfill a necessity.
Each of the contributions has been done through months-long discussions in the group, where each step has been taken care of not just by one individual but in situational collectivity. Also, it has been inspired by various speakers and professionals who shared their knowledge and stories with us.
Potpuri is there for you to take it for free and enjoy, and it is here to initiate further low-threshold publishing practices in Kosovo.
The project teams of Termokiss and the Master of Transdisciplinarity of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
The conceptualisation of this project started in October 2021 with the intention to provide a platform (online and physical) which is accessible for and addresses various ages and groups and different urgencies. With some of these common urgencies being: the breaking of the elitist approach to meaning, knowledge and cultural production in Kosovo; the formalisation of everyday topics which burden us commonly but we don’t share platforms where we feel heard; or the approach of our formal educational system which limits our need to learn and experiment; or even the nostalgia for the qualitative production of newspapers which we can’t encounter anymore in Kosovo.
With various individuals contributing to this initial print, we are taking the first step with the intention to create a recurring platform for publishing and sharing. A platform that doesn’t remain restricted by the precarity that surrounds the cultural and funding system in Kosovo, but that continues finding ways to reflect and reformulate our own practices on writing and documenting through cheap but qualitative, DIT (do it together), and freeful ways.
Potpuri invites the reader to, at one point, become its co-creator. It invites the contributor to transmit knowledge, to remain open and transform within topics and questions, resources and tools which the surrounding can provide. Its claim is to be loved or liked by a diverse public and fulfill a necessity.
Each of the contributions has been done through months-long discussions in the group, where each step has been taken care of not just by one individual but in situational collectivity. Also, it has been inspired by various speakers and professionals who shared their knowledge and stories with us.
Potpuri is there for you to take it for free and enjoy, and it is here to initiate further low-threshold publishing practices in Kosovo.
The project teams of Termokiss and the Master of Transdisciplinarity of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).
with Contributions from:
Argnes Ahmeti, Thassiannira Araujo Sousa, Bujar Aruqaj, Ardita Avdija, Rozafa Basha, Caroline Baur, Anna Bertram, Frédéric Bron, Lea Burkhalter, Mara Djukaric, Njomza Dragusha, Fisnik Eger, Nistiman Erdede, Hannah Essler, Nicole Frei, Christian Gieben, Sofia Hachemi, Ervina Halili, Etrit Hasler, Valentin Hehl, Adelina Ismaili, Tinka Kelmendi, Diona Kusari, Ludwig Lederer, Nora Longatti, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Kushtrim Memeti, Elisa Pezza, Merlin Pohl, Era Qena, Jan Reimann, Marcel Rickli, Basil Rogger, Toska Salihu, Jehisson Santacruz Giraldo, Shpat Shkodra, Tobias Stumpp, Endrit Tasholli, Paula Thomaka, Arian Vula, Judith Weidmann, Wiebke Wiesner
Argnes Ahmeti, Thassiannira Araujo Sousa, Bujar Aruqaj, Ardita Avdija, Rozafa Basha, Caroline Baur, Anna Bertram, Frédéric Bron, Lea Burkhalter, Mara Djukaric, Njomza Dragusha, Fisnik Eger, Nistiman Erdede, Hannah Essler, Nicole Frei, Christian Gieben, Sofia Hachemi, Ervina Halili, Etrit Hasler, Valentin Hehl, Adelina Ismaili, Tinka Kelmendi, Diona Kusari, Ludwig Lederer, Nora Longatti, Roxani Marty Pavlaki, Kushtrim Memeti, Elisa Pezza, Merlin Pohl, Era Qena, Jan Reimann, Marcel Rickli, Basil Rogger, Toska Salihu, Jehisson Santacruz Giraldo, Shpat Shkodra, Tobias Stumpp, Endrit Tasholli, Paula Thomaka, Arian Vula, Judith Weidmann, Wiebke Wiesner