A place that will be the last to collapse, but that will inevitably collapse

Abstract

The text was written at the request of the Steirischer Herbst 2019 festival within the framework of its program with the phrase Grand Hotel Abyss, a striking metaphor of the philosopher Georg Lukács, which he used to describe the European intellectual and cultural scene in its confrontation with the arrival of fascism. In five monologues, the text reconstructs the story of the hotel complex Haludovo, a decadent paradise for rich American gamblers on the Croatian island of Krk in former Yugoslavia. The author of the idea and the investor of this hotel complex was the American multimillionare Bob Guccione, owner of the adult magazine Penthouse. With this playground for the rich, Guccione thought he had found the formula to merge capitalism and socialism, to appease the hatreds of the Cold War. The Grand Palace Hotel Haludovo offered for a socialist country unimaginable luxury, but it went bankrupt already in 1973, just a year after the lavish opening party, and entered a slow but certain decline. Today, its ruins represent the remnants of many failed ideas – Yugoslavia and its model of socialism and social ownership, the transition and privatization of the 1990s and the weary concept of a sovereign Europe.