Off the coast of Istria, Brijuni Archipelago is one of the most significant sites of the Yugoslav federation, and of non-aligned socialism. Over time, the archipelago found itself in a wide variety of roles: As a heritage location whose traces go back to the Romans, a private island of an Austro-Hungarian industrialist in the 18th century, a playground of European elites around 1900, Tito’s private island in the mid-twentieth century, a defense zone on the European frontier, layers over layers of these uses have been conserved within its small and clearly defined territory. In the 1980s, amid the dissolution of the Yugoslav project, the highly designed and constructed landscape of Brijuni was declared a nature park, as if in a recognition that its contentious histories should be depoliticized and left aside, undisturbed, like a memory capsule to be opened in a different future.Today, the archipelago can be perceived as a conservatory of the landscape and architectural deposits from these eras, as a time capsule; its memories are telling the story of a constantly renegotiated relationship between the human and the non-human, between the tangible and the representative.

Through the medium of short film, we engaged with the few who still inhabit and care for Brijuni today: for its planted gardens, for exotic animals and their caretakers, exclusion zones, and personal memories. The course took place as collective artistic research in spring semester 2024 as a collaboration with TU Graz, Institute of Contemporary Art, Prof. Milica Tomić and TU Wien, Institute of Architecture and Design, Prof. Wilfried Kühn.

Our guests will be Prof. Milica Tomić, TU Graz; Philipp Sattler, TU Graz; and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, EPFL.