Stories of the Zakarpattia Hotel
Vlad Kononok
Residence Sorry No Rooms Available

Program:

August 20, 2022
20:00 Opening of the exhibition
21:00 musical program
Banan Vedro, Vlad Kononok – Audiovisual performance
Zhenya Kasyan – DJ set
TBA

Hotel “Zakarpattia”, one of the tallest buildings in Uzhhorod, has always stood out in the city landscape. The exhibition of the same name is an attempt to investigate how the function of the hotel has changed over its more than 40 years of existence: from its construction on the eve of the 1980 Olympic Games, when the hotel served as an elite shelter for foreigners (“intourists”), and the hotel’s restaurant and bar were prestigious and difficult to access for citizens topography, due to decline in the 1990s and partial revival in the 2010s as the location of the residence “Sorry, no rooms available”. From February 2022, “Zakarpattia”, like many recreational facilities in the region, performs the function of temporary housing for displaced persons from the war-affected regions of Ukraine.
The exhibition “” is interdisciplinary: archival and historical evidence about the architecture and construction of the hotel, stories and memories of the townspeople and the author’s own observations of the life of the hotel and its architectural forms are collected here. Separately, the latest impressions of staying in the hotel from the displaced persons who found temporary shelter here, and their experience of adapting to the conditions of “Transcarpathia” are presented.

Text by Olga Papash

The Kononok Vladyslav residence was made possible thanks to the support of:
Austrian Ludwig Foundation for Art and Science
European Cultural Foundation / Culture of Solidarity Fund: Ukraine Edition
House of Europe

Photo credit M Melnychenko

Photo credit Petro Ryaska

Fragment of performance, video credit P. Ryaska: