The Sad Fate of Artificial Intelligentsia

Written for Kosovo Online by Srdjan Garcevic, founder of The Nutshell Times

The strangest campaign promise made during Albin Kurti’s seemingly failed attempt to retain control of Priština authorities was a very showy opera/philharmonic designed by Bjarke Ingels, a Danish starchitect. The glistening undulating metal roof and facade of the project, made as a reference to the local traditional skirt, was the only thing that made it less generic than other BIG projects, which, in the region, also include the controversial and seemingly doomed Tirana National theatre. While the Priština project is a total fantasy made to win votes, much like other Kurti’s promises, which included making life even more dire for the Serbs, it offers a great case study for how art and public life were kept up in the Balkans and arguably around the world, before the decommission of the USAID and Trump’s threat to end similar US projects.

Despite the fact that major hostilities in Kosovo and Metohija ended almost three decades ago, Priština authorities are still highly dependent on foreign aid, much like it was during the Yugoslav times when it was a beneficiary of local development funds.  Contributions from a single aid agency, USAID, in the past few years constituted around 1% of the GDP for the period. The US taxpayers provided over $300 to each person in Kosovo and Metohija through USAID alone between 2020 and 2024. Given the presence of various other aid agencies in the region, the share of foreign aid is staggering, especially given that one of the projects to spend that money on is a flashy performing arts center, hardly an economic generator.

Therein lies a clue: much of the money tends to prop up the local elite, who are journalists, analysts, and artists - not exactly the most vulnerable and ceratinly not the most economically productive people.

More worryingly, despite the lofty ideals that pepper the project proposals—reconciliation, art, inclusion—the money created a very tight-knit, “artificial intelligentsia“ that simulates a civic society that cares about little but one's own interests.

The situation in Kosovo and Metohija, with its faux-imperialist USAID-funded chauvinist in chief, is but the most acute, but the same is true throughout the “region” as well as, it seems, much of the world.

The success of the funding for great causes such as reconciliation can be seen in Kurti’s policies and threats to Serbs, but also in the way this artificial intelligentsia treats their Serb colleagues who are not there to provide a cover. Although nominal liberals or even internationalist leftists, they are always quick to demonize those who are not with them, and despite their “empathy,” stay silent or even support attacks on Serbian culture in Kosovo. 

This clannishness is their only real skill. They are unable to live up to even the basic criteria of what makes an intelligentsia. In the analytical sphere, the typical example of this group is the made-up analyst “Daniel Smith,” who was duly interviewed by Al Jazeera Balkans and Serbian Danas and whose only virtue was spewing anti-Serbian propaganda.

In the arts sphere, thanks to the requirements of “tastemakers,” i.e., funders from abroad, they created a whole cottage industry of miserable activist pablum. Whether it is sentimental propaganda movies about war and transition, sentimental propaganda novels about war and transition, or sentimental propaganda visual art about war and transition, no matter how many awards it receives from this clique, all of it is basically worth the value of paper used to write funding proposals and stays relevant for as long as the funding period is completed.

In Priština, Belgrade, Sarajevo, or wherever, overfunded and powerful, they try to bulldoze anybody who dares to do something different, seeing any art, entertainment, or work as a threat. Everything that is not activist pablum - traditional or new - and was not bought and brought inside the clique, is dismissed as vaguely “bad” or outright dangerous. The only thing allowed for a member of the artificial intelligence is to be a soldier for the cause, create activist content, and, for a bit of fun, organize and attend a protest.

However, this class is doomed - due to its ineptitude and due to the fact that the world has a tendency to change. For decades, their parasitic relationship with both the US and local taxpayers was there, as there was a belief that they had created some value. However, the reality catches up: no matter how hyped up, opera buildings that were promised end up not getting built, and the money for propagandistic projects ends up in already full pockets. People notice. Endless screeds in the foreign press, like the Guardian and especially local copycats, about trauma and lofty ideals turn out to be incorrect, and the authors are frauds. People notice. Most importantly, at one point, people remember that elections, despite blackmail, like in the case of Kurti and many others, are lost.

Without political backing and with no utility, artificial intelligentsia finally gets exposed to the real economy, where people and share their thoughts, analyses, and creative endeavors easily but are subjected to the filter of real public opinion. The artificial intelligentsia, failing to deal with reality, eventually gets replaced with artificial intelligence, which can do thoughtless screeds and visual slop much more quickly and for a better price. There is a space, and people with some actual talent can rise up and build things that are not Potemkin villages.