Return to Adriaport
„The goal of peaceful coexistence based on free mutual cooperation would be achieved in this area by a Czechoslovak „peace corridor“ to the Adriatic Sea, which would not hurt or bother anyone and from which everyone involved would benefit.“ (Karel Žlábek, 1967)
Return to Adriaport is a fictional document by Adéla Babanová (b. 1980). The young artist has recently centered her work on the recent history of Czechoslovakia, a period linked with a still painful and so far inadequately reflected stage in this country´s life: namely, the half-century of Communist rule. While Babanová works with facts with a good deal of precision, she at the same time never hesitates to use elements of mystification and absurdity. Starting from a real-life event, she pursues her job as a film maker, working with script-writers Vojtěch Mašek and Džian Baban, to create an entirely new story, complete with a protagonist and a dramatic plot.
Featured in the leading role here is economics professor Karel Žlábek, the moving spirit behind an ambitious project anticipating a tunnel to the Adriatic coast. An array of weird developments acted out by political leaders of the former Czechoslovakia, represent an explicit enough background to which no further mystification needs to be added. The film combines elements of docudrama with illustrative documentary shots from the period. The artist applies principles of animated collage which she couples with archival records, photographs, and mock interviews.
As a result of the project, Czechoslovakia was to become a “maritime country”, its citizens being able to reach the Adriatic coast within no more than two hours. At 350 kilometres long, the track was to lead from the city of České Budějovice, across Austria, to what is today Slovenian territory, reaching its terminus near the Italian port of Trieste. The avant-garde, indeed unprecedented project had hatched in Professor Žlábek´s head from as early as the end of the Second World War, but it was only with the advent of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia, favouring greater freedom and economic flexibility, that he could begin to hope in its implementation. Therefore, a year before the Prague Spring he was able to put his grandiose plan down on paper, and present it in a lecture at the University of Florida. The project´s future realization was to contribute not just to the fast transportation of fresh goods and improved quality of the environment, but also to offering the country´s citizenry an easy option of travel to the seashore rather than to their weekend cottages.
The project, which was to make come true the landlocked nation´s dream of its own accessway to the sea, as well as of its own artificial island of Adriaport, was cut short by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. Although the further liberalization of the communist regime was then stifled for the ensuing two decades by totalitarian “normalization”, thanks to tireless efforts propelled by the avant-garde genius of Professor Žlábek, in the 1970s the idea of the tunnel was resurrected, and in 1979 the project of high-speed railway line was taken up by the firm Pragoprojekt.
Eventually though, the futurist vision did not materialize; only charts and designs of the project have survived. These now provide an eloquent testimony to the relevance of the concept as well as to the unbending will of Professor Žlábek in the pursuit of his goal of launching the nation onto a trajectory of freedom.
Adéla Babanová studied at the Department of New Media, Printmaking and Conceptual Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 2000–2006. The protagonists of her videos have gone through a dynamic process of transformation from fictional female characters to real-life figures from this country´s history, a subject with which the artist has become intensely preoccupied in her two most recent titles (Return to Adriaport; and Where Did the Stewardess Fall from?). In terms of genre, she has so far exploited the formats of radio play, television chat show, crime story, fictional documentary, and others. Adéla Babanová is currently making her second appearance in the exhibition programme of City Gallery Prague. Her previous show, in 2009, was mounted as part of the gallery´s series targeting the youngest generation of artists, Start up. Since then, her achievements have included for instance a nomination for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 2012. She has to her credit a number of exhibitions abroad. There, Return to Adriaport was presented with considerable success at the Loop Barcelona last year, and more recently also in a solo show in ZAHORIAN&co GALLERY in Bratislava.
Sandra Baborovská
- The project is a result of a cooperation with00:00:26.211
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- my brother Džian and Vojta Mašek.00:00:28.723
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- They've heard about the 1970s idea to dig00:00:31.191
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- a tunnel from České Budějovice to the Adriatic.00:00:36.721
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- The idea was published in Lidové noviny00:00:41.684
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- for the first time in 2009.00:00:44.006
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- The boys made a full-length film script00:00:48.412
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- which was never carried out but00:00:53.573
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- it became a thread of their script.00:00:56.514
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- When I was offered to take part in00:01:01.673
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- the video festival Loop in Barcelona,00:01:04.430
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- we wanted to present something about Czechoslovakia.00:01:07.920
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- The Švestka Gallery was the only one representing00:01:19.004
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- the Central or East Europe.00:01:22.283
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- I wanted to tell the international audience00:01:24.861
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- something about the Czechoslovakian history.00:01:28.712
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- So this Utopian project from the past suggested itself.00:01:34.731
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- It was created gradually,00:01:57.172
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- I guess it was similar to making00:02:00.138
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- a documentary film even I have never worked on any.00:02:03.904
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- I contacted the Prague project engineering company Pragoprojekt00:02:12.060
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- which has the original documentation about00:02:19.527
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- the tunnel in their archive.00:02:23.697
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- Another materials, circumstances and people00:02:26.176
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- started to come up successively.00:02:30.766
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- So I got to the former director of Pragoprojekt00:02:33.904
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- Mr Tvrzník, who is00:02:37.043
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- and he won't hear a word against the project.00:02:41.405
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- He was willing to appear in the film,00:02:45.506
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- we made interviews with him and he also00:02:49.283
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- provided us with his personal documentation.00:02:53.729
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- It's important to say that the author of00:02:57.448
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- the original railway link project going under the ground00:03:01.922
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- from Czechoslovakia to the Adriatic00:03:08.290
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- was the professor of economics Karel Žlábek,00:03:10.072
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- who was in the00:03:12.921
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- and he had born this idea for a very long time.00:03:19.144
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- He studied economics in Switzerland and Europe,00:03:23.444
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- he was a kind of globe-trotter and00:03:27.150
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- a visionary at the same time.00:03:29.258
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- He calculated the link would be extremely advantageous.00:03:32.158
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- Because of the tunnel shortness00:03:37.006
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- which was about00:03:40.037
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- by the elevated line we would get00:03:43.406
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- to the sea in two hours.00:03:46.124
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- He planned the link from České Budějovice00:03:49.883
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- across Linz and the train would get out00:03:54.473
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- in Koper near Trieste.00:03:58.089
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- Prof. Žlábek even counted on making use00:04:06.011
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- of the material from the tunnelling.00:04:11.944
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- He wanted to pile it up to make a peninsula00:04:16.328
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- that would become a part of Czechoslovakian territory.00:04:21.728
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- So the Czechoslovakians would gain a peninsula called Adriaport.00:04:26.152
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- The film is about my vision the tunnel was constructed in 198000:05:03.773
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- and hundreds of Czechoslovakians00:05:12.535
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- went through the tunnel to the sea.00:05:19.800
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- They experienced their first and only holiday on the island.00:05:25.406
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- I used the peninsula's project name Adriaport and00:05:30.794
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- created an independent island in the Adriatic.00:05:37.335
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- It's a Czechoslovakian territory with Czechoslovakians only00:05:44.377
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- and Czechoslovak hotels and so on.00:05:53.915
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- We let the island be created in our film,00:05:57.929
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- there is the president of that time Gustav Husák00:06:03.050
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- and professor Karel Žlábek as the project author.00:06:07.252
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- The film starts with Karel Žlábek trying00:06:13.470
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- to convince Gustav Husák of the idea brilliance00:06:16.285
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- and Gustav Husák gives him the green light.00:06:21.419
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- But soon strange things start to happen on the island,00:06:35.673
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- there live weird animals,00:06:40.898
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- paranormal activities are coming about.00:06:43.159
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- Prof. Žlábek thinks it's because Czechoslovakia00:06:49.868
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- broke the law about territory.00:06:53.590
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- How could Czechoslovakians have sea when it's given00:06:57.674
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- neither by history nor by territory acts.00:07:01.667
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- There certainly is a history parallel,00:08:35.782
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- the tunnel or the way of the Czechoslovakians00:08:40.035
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- to the sea in the days of iron curtain00:08:43.202
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- symbolizes their escape to freedom.00:08:45.787
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- Of course it's relative because it was00:08:53.020
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- possible to run away to the East,00:08:56.008
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- to the former Yugoslavia.00:08:58.189
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- So there is this paradox and at the same time a parallel00:09:00.229
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- to a specific Czechoslovakian00:09:03.830
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- custom which were the escapes to00:09:06.664
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- weekend houses and cottages at weekends00:09:09.350
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- and suddenly they just shut the door and went on holiday.00:09:11.340
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- I work with the issue of a history manipulation,00:09:31.282
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- with a personal memory,00:09:36.547
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- memory of kids and facts perversion.00:09:39.597
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- It's a certain parallel to the Communist rhetoric00:09:45.268
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- and the way they would alter and adapt the history.00:09:50.465
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- I had historic material at my disposal and00:09:54.867
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- I treated it in a manipulatory way,00:09:57.485
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- which means I started to make up things,00:09:59.587
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- re-edited the scenes and00:10:03.202
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- put them into another context.00:10:06.524
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- I adapted them to my story which I needed to get in.00:10:10.585
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- That's how I follow up with my previous video work.00:10:15.426