MOTEL TROGIR

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

A project by Bjcem and Slobodne veze/Loose Associations

MOTEL TROGIR
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Trogir/Split, June 19-21, 2015 // Milano, October 2015

Motel Trogir was built in 1965 and designed by one of the leading architects of the Socialist Yugoslavia – Ivan Vitić. It is situated at the western entrance to the city of Trogir on the Adriatic coast (25km from the city of Split). Today it marks one of the neuralgic points of the town and for many years it has been standing devastated due to unresolved ownership issues (due to the non-transparent privatization of what once was ‘societal property’, in the beginning of the 1990s). Built at a time when the character of tourism in Trogir was mostly transitory, the motel was conceived in parallel with the construction of the Adriatic Highway. At the time it was seen “as one of the “performative” elements that would fit into the utopian vision of this road imagined as a feature film that would be “shown to the passengers on the screen of their car window.” The motel is, in general, an exception to the typology of Adriatic tourism, and it is argued that the idea of such buildings in the Yugoslav socialist society came through American movies.

In Martin Scorsese’s movie ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’ (1974) a woman with her son ride across the USA in their car, using motels as temporary shelters.

The endless road in search for the utopian place of happiness becomes the meaning for itself. The trajectory slowly delineates the (hi)story. Motels become their permanent home.

In the framework of Mediterranea 17 Young Artists Bienniale, artists have been invited to reflect on the topic of this particular modernist building (along with the social context which formed it), duration and image, alternating between the gritty realism and daring fantasy. The idea is that the context and the building become a stage, a protagonist or a trigger for the new personal or common narrative that would develop around the topics exposed.

The call closed on May 15th 2015. Proposals were submitted by 36 applicants from Croatia, Great Britain, Egypt, Armenia, Moldova, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Switzerland.

Selected artists are:

Croatia            Igor Juran

Croatia            Bojan Mrđenović

Croatia            Ana Zubak

Slovenia          Gaja Mežnarić

UK                    Sandra Fruebing

Serbia              Sonja Jankov

Selected artists have been involved in a three days working trip to Split and Trogir, on June 18th – 22nd.
The participants had the opportunity to visit the urban and architectural complex Dobri, part of which is the first skyscraper built in Split, designed by the architect Vuko Bombardelli. They also visited the Motel Sljeme/Trogir designed by Ivo Vitić, and the so called “Split 3″, a urban project that was envisaged to extend across the east outskirts of the city.

The results of the project will be presented during Mediterranea 17 Young Artists Biennale in October.

More about the Motel in Trogir:

https://slobodneveze.wordpress.com/category/commons/
https://slobodneveze.wordpress.com/publications/
http://moteltrogir.tumblr.com/
http://bit.ly/Facebook_Motel_Trogir
Photo: L Kittinger for MT (2014)

For all other questions, please contact slobodne.veze@gmail.com

Today when distances are shortened and relativized due to the (too) fast technical development, the motel’s true reason disappears, and it becomes incomprehensible and confined to the arbitrariness of formal judgement. Set apart from experimental scope of everyday life, the motel is closer to passionate incomprehensibility (the times of myths) than passionless knowledge (of today)

“Vitić’s motels- Trieste, Umag, Rijeka, Biograd, Trogir” by Tomislav Pavelić (Arhitektura br.217: Ivo Vitić, UHA, Zagreb 2006.)

BJCEM is supported by:

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