“The past is never dead. It’s not even a past”. William Faulkner “To the extent that the past can indeed be overcome, this can be achieved only by telling what happened”. Hannah Arendt    

It can be translated as “the place from where you can see and hear everything”. The other meaning of the first word, according to which the second was built is that of an ideal prison, conceived more than two hundreds years ago by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The Utilitarian did not believe in the utopia of a perfect society. Communism was such a utopia. The claims to realize it brought society to a total control, similar to Bentham’s prison. The clinic’s laboratory was used for film developing, for manufacturing of keys to open doors and safes. Illegal opening of [...]

These are voices captured by electronic interception decades ago. But they cannot be a curiosity object. They come from the darkness, from the abyss. Regardless of their words, they are voices that invite for a reflection on the past. The transcription model of an interception made by State Security employees is shown in one of the rooms.

Surveillance was used for all social strata and categories, because none of them was immune from persecution; a priority was that class or category that was considered as potentially dangerous at a given moment. A word, a song, a casual meeting could quite well be considered hostile activity. A telephone interception list is shown. This list was taken from the archive of the Ministry of Internal Affair. Tirana of the 70's had about 1,500 family telephones that were given by special authorization from high State bodies. They were given mostly to Nomenclature families or to those who had connections with [...]

Private life under the communist regime was completely unprotected from State intervention, because the ideology had a collectivist character and the party-State was omnipotent. With regard to the family, the state played the role of the patriarch, who should know everything and decide everything. Secret interception via microphones was just one of the ways in which the State penetrated every home, capturing intimate conversations whenever and how often it wanted. When an individual was declared an enemy, it fell like a curse on the entire family. In this sector visitors can see a typically living room of the 70's with [...]