Olja Triaška Stefanovič
Olja Triaška Stefanovič (1978) was born in Novi Sad, Serbia, lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2007 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design at the Department of Photography and New Media in Bratislava, Slovakia.
In her art practise she is focused on the relationship between, photography and space, historical and sociological memory space, the disappearance of space but also changes of its functionality and space simulation.
For last four years she works at the Department of Photography and New Media and this year finishing her doctoral studies of photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She was presenting her work at many group and solo exhibitions in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Serbia, Spain, Germany.
- In 2009 I had the first show after graduating at university,00:00:19.380
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- where I have presented a photography series entitled 'Pink Shadows'.00:00:24.220
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- I was interested in the deception of viewers00:00:28.460
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- by simulating places,00:00:32.890
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- social phenomena,00:00:37.350
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- and everything that happens on a TV screen one watches at home and identifies with it.00:00:41.600
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- For some time I've been making photos of film studios at the moments00:00:47.050
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- when they are not used, when they are having their 'silent moment'.00:00:51.160
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- I was interested in the accumulation of all the things, social things,00:00:58.460
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- you can find in the individual studio segments.00:01:02.960
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- You can find there a bedroom, a gynecological chair.00:01:07.260
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- I have been making all the photographs with technical lighting.00:01:11.430
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- I was curious how the background00:01:15.880
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- of the simulation looked like.00:01:20.180
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- Back then, in 2009, I have started to pursue the question of what is, actually, the stage.00:01:24.450
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- The first output was this show,00:01:30.790
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- where I have studied various forms of stage in contemporary society.00:01:34.990
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- And I was interested in the relationship between the stage and the auditorium.00:01:40.650
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- Paradoxically, my focus didn't lie in the theatrical kind of stage -00:01:45.720
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- I was looking for other kinds.00:01:50.020
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- The initial fascination and interest00:01:54.400
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- came from the stages in cultural centers,00:01:58.770
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- that is a special kind of buildings00:02:02.990
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- that have been built00:02:08.110
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- since, essentially, 1950s, but the biggest boom happened in 1970s in Slovakia.00:02:12.490
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- I was interested mainly in the message the stages in the cultural centers carry.00:02:16.970
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- What kinds of sediment are there.00:02:21.600
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- Like, for example, what does the fact00:02:25.840
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- that there is a motivation of political ideology behind the construction of the stage,00:02:30.010
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- mean for a viewer sitting in auditorium.00:02:34.130
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- I have been making photos, again, of empty auditorium, without people,00:02:38.390
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- without the viewers, and, once again, I am interested in the viewer's position.00:02:42.470
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- It was made as large format photography, exhibited in such way00:02:46.740
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- that the auditorium faced the stage and the viewer has found himself in-between them.00:02:50.950
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- He had to confront the fact that he is being part of both stage and auditorium.00:02:55.440
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- Then I had elaborated on the idea00:03:01.160
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- by exploring the deceptive stage of television00:03:05.457
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- by making photographs in the news studio of Slovak Television00:03:14.257
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- as a source of deception00:03:18.539
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- that streams directly to our living rooms.00:03:22.663
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- And we have the power to change the deception00:03:27.038
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- because we have a remote control.00:03:31.199
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- Sometimes it makes me very angry00:03:37.077
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- to see all the things that take place on the TV screen00:03:41.174
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- and the way we are confronted, willingly or unwillingly,00:03:45.509
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- with all the reality shows imposed on the ordinary viewer.00:03:49.892
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- And I perceive it as a kind of aggression.00:03:56.090
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- The next part of the project, though separated...00:04:00.211
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- this is the way it looked like when exhibited.00:04:04.668
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- It's a black and white photography and it's a zoo.00:04:08.709
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- And the zoo is interesting because it is essentially a stage, too.00:04:12.909
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- This is lion and these are... It's the Prague zoo.00:04:17.230
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- I was looking for the best stage there; it had to be the right shape.00:04:21.622
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- These are lions and tigers - caged.00:04:26.078
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- It has a ground plan of a stage.00:04:30.238
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- But the interesting thing is that the zoo00:04:34.851
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- was built for the purpose of entertainment and education.00:04:38.999
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- Therefore, the simulation of the environment is better in the states that are economically better off.00:04:43.256
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- It means that the wealthier country invests more to its zoos as well, paradoxically.00:04:48.542
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- The zoo has then more options to simulate the environment better.00:04:53.842
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- And we watch the animals,00:05:02.473
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- caged for our sake, so that we can see the living beings, walking around in their cages,00:05:07.159
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- and get to know them.00:05:12.554
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- The last element of the exhibition was, actually, a small installation.00:05:17.591
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- It's a photo wallpaper I had bought in Hornbach00:05:23.802
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- and it's about the feeling of having one's own private stage.00:05:28.106
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- All of us want our lives to be better and more beautiful00:05:33.693
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- and we want it here and now.00:05:38.010
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- We want to find ourselves on some beach on Pacific Islands,00:05:42.268
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- so we go to Hornbach and we buy the photo wallpaper00:05:46.656
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- and we place it in our living room. We put there a chair and then we watch it.00:05:50.862
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- We simulate the dreamed-of idea of our lives.00:05:54.975
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- Last thing I made, it's a sketch; I have been making photographs of a political stage,00:06:00.182
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- the stage in parliament, with auditorium captured.00:06:04.591
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- I am going to go on with this.00:06:08.905
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- There is the idea of power, as of stage.00:06:12.939
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- It's a bunker of politicians.00:06:19.865
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- Every time I find myself in this place it feels like 2005;00:06:23.583
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- as if the time stopped here. It's kind of a cancellation of time and space.00:06:30.251
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- Because the city space behind me, this gap00:06:34.759
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- has been a subject of my photographic exploration since 2005.00:06:39.033
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- While having the first solo show00:06:44.447
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- I thought I won't be making photos of the city gaps anymore.00:06:48.573
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- But I can't give it up. I will probably keep on making photographs of the gap00:06:52.840
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- until they build something here. Because it still fascinates me;00:06:57.064
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- it's beautiful in autumn, like a flowery garden.00:07:03.133
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- It keeps on changing. Now it's overgrown.00:07:07.510
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- Another time, suddenly someone comes and mows the lawn,00:07:13.407
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- and there is magic in it, for I am never here to see anyone coming here00:07:17.321
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- and taking care of it, beautifying it.00:07:21.498
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- A lots of stuff here; this is garbage.00:07:26.355
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- And it is starting to rain now, to drizzle.00:07:32.691
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- But it's a beautiful light for photography.00:07:39.981
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- One would make here great photos now.00:07:44.302
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- We're here.00:07:48.267
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- The weird thing is, when I started to take interest in the place,00:07:59.133
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- I wondered what it actually is, what happens when you tear down a building00:08:04.416
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- and such empty space remains,00:08:09.458
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- what information do we have about 'before' and 'after',00:08:13.706
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- and what is our stake in knowing all this.00:08:19.618
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- I have been looking for such a space for a long time.00:08:23.467
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- And when I found it, in 2005, suddenly there have been other similar interesting gaps00:08:27.842
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- occurring around Bratislava.00:08:32.655
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- Then I went on making photos of them in Budapest or Novi Sad.00:08:36.517
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- And then I started to study people's reactions to me making photos of the gaps.00:08:40.846
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- The utter lack of understanding of me doing so when there is nothing to capture; it's empty.00:08:45.167
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- So I started to talk to them and some of the reactions were marvelous;00:08:49.520
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- I came to find out about the house that used to stand here.00:08:53.917
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- That there was a man living here who was a shoemaker,00:08:58.140
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- if I recall it correctly, and he provided the Jelenia Street with specific coloring.00:09:02.714
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- Even the hill over there appeared here under weird circumstances,00:09:12.082
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- I don't know where from.00:09:16.104
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- It's a kind of a visual sociological study of space,00:09:19.966
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- of a new space in city.00:09:24.339
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- In 2004, when I made the first photo of a cycle, a photo of Central Baths00:09:34.429
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- that were devastated and waiting for a demolition.00:09:38.921
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- It was some week prior to the demolition that I made the photograph.00:09:45.616
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- It my first entering the city,00:09:49.959
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- entering spaces that were telling stories00:09:54.274
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- about people taking a bath there, people who had experienced the meaning of the place.00:09:58.807
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- I started to explore the architecture of the city even more.00:10:04.601
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- And then I came to realize that it is also my personal search00:10:08.997
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- for a new space to live in, since I have changed the environment I live in.00:10:13.334
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- I came as young, 18-year old to a foreign country I didn't know anything about.00:10:17.620
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- So I was looking for my own place here. So, going through devastated, lost places,00:10:21.800
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- I was getting familiar with the story.00:10:26.255
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- And all the places I have photographed,00:10:37.462
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- like Hviezda, a garden cinema, or Grössling Baths,00:10:41.697
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- talk about something,00:10:45.832
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- the sediment does.00:10:50.062
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- And then I was also asking people what it is to them,00:10:54.097
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- like, for example the garden cinema Hviezda. There is a lot of emotion on the photographs,00:10:58.211
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- even though it's a static shot.00:11:03.311
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- Like an impersonal photography.00:11:15.637
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- Therefore I think it is exactly the kind of photography00:11:19.849
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- that is cleansed of people and deception, capturing the space the way it is,00:11:24.203
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- the kind that offers emotion, feelings and experience encoded in the place.00:11:35.438
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- And that's the way it is, in all of those years,00:11:44.138
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- I have become someone who captures all the dead spaces,00:11:48.370
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- and it feels like a funeral being held in those places.00:11:52.686
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- The last of them was Alexis, a book store I made photographs of.00:11:57.068
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- And while making the photos00:12:01.439
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- I felt all the original lively attributes of the space were eliminated;00:12:05.768
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- what remained were empty, clean shelves.00:12:10.070
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- And I felt there nostalgia, melancholy.00:12:14.429
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- And the melancholy may be found in all of my photographs.00:12:18.816
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- Like the Grössling Baths photographs00:12:23.036
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- - it seems to me as if it's almost a meditative photography.00:12:27.203
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- One can look at it and think about those years, 1920 or 1930,00:12:31.593
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- when it was operational,00:12:35.831
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- and how did it change throughout time, and how many people were there and saw it,00:12:39.988
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- and it's still standing there, in Old Town, and it's still out of use00:12:44.660
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- and nobody cares.00:12:49.019
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- It's in private hands and there is no interest in revitalizing it.00:12:54.747