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| 11 a.m. | Screening of ‘touristic intents’ |
| 12:30 p.m. | Break |
| 12:40 p.m. | Presentation by Oliver Thill and André Kempe of the architectural firm, Atelier Kempe Thill |
| 1 p.m. | Round table discussion with writer and director, Mat Rappaport |
Touristic Intents
A three-mile long Nazi resort, taking cues from American industrial titan Henry Ford, is redeveloped as a contemporary vacation destination; how do we reconcile its history against modern commercial forces?
Mat Rappaport‘touristic intents’ is a film that explores the connection between mass tourism and political ideology. Written and directed by Mat Rappaport, the film is centered on a case study; the never completed Nazi Resort in Prora, Germany.
The mammoth site at Prora was designed to house 20,000 vacationing working class Germans while providing each room with a view of the water. The building was used in propaganda to forward a promise of leisure time and strengthen sympathies between the workers and the Nazi party. While the site was never completed by the Nazis, the Socialist East German government completed the construction and used it as a military training site that also included a small officer’s resort. During this time, the site housed the largest group of East German Conscientious Objectors. Currently, the building is being redeveloped with a youth hostel, apartments, condominiums and hotels.
Grappling with notions of place and identity in an era when the role of national monuments has become a defining issue for the selective maintenance of cultural memory, the resort of Prora stand as a lasting reminder of how buildings become vehicles for political ideology and myth-making throughout their lives. Is there an obligation to remember a building’s dark past? In the case of Prora, connections are drawn to the Nazi, GDR and contemporary political moment while acknowledging the influence of American industrialization and globalism.
