TOMORROW HOTEL

We all hear stories of migrants from conflicted nations from time to time. We hear about the statistics, finances, and the social problems arriving from their migration and so on. What we often don’t hear, however, is the story behind all of that; the difficulty of having to start your life anew; the confusion of having lost your identity; the longing towards something deeply rooted, that is no longer there; the powerlessness towards it all.

When I visited Taiwan for the first time in 2019, I was deeply mesmerised by the sight of the Taiwanese landscape I had been staring at from the car window on the highway; the graves, mountains and the cities that dwelled inside. It somehow strongly reminded me of the stories my parents had told me about Yugoslavia, from before they fled: A place that had everything, where you could safely leave your door unlocked overnight. I started to wonder if Taiwan would be the utopia my parents told me about – what Yugoslavia could have been if it wasn’t for that damn war? Visiting Taiwan for the first time, there was something nostalgic about that.

In 2021, I returned to Taiwan to settle down there. During my stay, I was partially re-living what my parents had gone trough leaving their home – building a new life, in a new country from scratch. The difference here was that I still held the option of going back. Nevertheless, I traversed Taiwan from hotel to hotel, framing the Taiwanese atmosphere trough the eyes of my Yugoslavian upbringing. The images I took were reminiscent of my own staring gaze, tidily and cleanly composed, as if I was trying to have some sense of control over what was happening. Although I was making somewhat of a self-portrait, it was also a story about Taiwan at the same time.

Taiwan, going trough several regime changes past century, is again standing on the equilibrium of forming a new identity. And although identity is something that is strongly sedimented in a society, in political contexts they are often taken at surface value, leaving lots of people estranged, as their old heritage is no longer valid. Reflecting upon this thought, my traveling from hotel to hotel became a metaphor for the liminality of those who traversed regimes came to fall in. What was once ‘Home’ became a ‘hotel’ overnight – a temporary residence. A retainer for the next destination, until one can finally return home one day. A fate that is not far off from being a tourist – a traveling stranger in a foreign world.

Having no place to return to, while longing for a ‘utopia’ – the place we feel we belong to. Tomorrow Hotel is about exploring the sentiment towards a recent history that seems to have faded from the surface of the earth. Just like the nostalgic stories of my parents, in Taiwan I listened to stories about different utopias. If you would look at them from the highway, the mountains or cities, they might be invisible. But if you look closer, maybe, on the streets, but surely in peoples homes, you might still see that these old utopias are more than alive.