The Observer (2022-01-09)

(EriveltonMoraes) #1
The Observer
World 09.01.22 29

‘There used to be a buzz


here. Why can’t we recreate


the old energy of Sarajevo?’


Bosnian capital hopes


for cultural revival


with restoration of


Olympic village hotel


of Berlin’s Tresor nightclub , to include
a music venue in the refurbishment.
“I wanted to turn it into a cul-
tural lighthouse,” Hegemann said. “It
should be a place where people can
overcome ethnic differences – it is a
special place with a special power. But
I don’t have to own it.”
The hotel had 162 rooms and a cin-
ema that Hegemann believes would
make a perfect venue, and create the
same conditions as clubs such as
Berlin’s Tresor and Berghain , which
were created after the fall of the Berlin
Wall and provided a place for young
people from West Germany to mix
with their eastern bloc counterparts.
Such a club would bring tourists
to Sarajevo, Hegemann believes, and
he has interest from international DJs
such as Jeff Mills and Mark Reeder to
create an outdoor festival this sum-
mer among the ruins of the ski jumps
in the hillside forests.
“The problem is that the young cre-
ative people from the region are emi-
grating. They feel they have no future
there and no space to test themselves
and experiment ,” said Hegemann.
Sarajevo has not prospered since
the Dayton peace accords ended the
war in 1995 , and there are few cultural
landmarks left. The Skenderija centre ,
where Jayne Torvill and Christopher

Dean won gold in the fi gure skat-
ing for Great Britain, was renovated
in 1999 after sustaining light
damage during the war and
includes a concert venue, but there
is now talk of selling it.
A bout half a million people are
estimated to have left Bosnia -
Herzegovina in the past six years,
and a survey by the United Nations
in November found that nearly half
of the country’s under 30s are con-
sidering emigrating.
Christian Schmidt, the UN
high representative for Bosnia -
Herzegovina, warned last year that
the country was in danger of breaking
apart , with the Bosnian Serb leader
Milorad Dodik threatening to create
a new army. The US imposed sanc-
tions on Dodik last week , and the EU
has 700 soldiers from its Eufor peace-
keeping force in the country.
Edin Forto, the prime minister of
the Sarajevo canton, one of the coun-
try’s 10 regions , is desperate to bring
investment to revive the city’s for-
tunes. Granov and his backers opened
another hotel on Mount Igman in
2020, and Forto is pleased the Igman
hotel has fi nally been sold to a decent
investor. But he believes Hegemann’s
plans are important for Sarajevo.
“We aren’t going to be the new
Berlin but we can be the old Sarajevo,
because it was a cultural hub in the
80s,” he said. “Everyone wanted to
come here and create theatre, music,
fi lm. There was a buzz. Why can’t we
just recreate this energy?”
Sarajevo used to be the centre of
rock and pop music, but that has
ebbed away, he said. “It seems like
people in the villages won the war.
Urban culture is dying. Now the most
popular thing here is turbo-folk. I
think it’s disgusting. We were the hub
of urban popular culture and now
we’re the hub of nothing. Now we
import culture from Serbia and not
the best kind. I don’t want to sound
pessimistic – I’m in politics to change
things. But we need allies.”

James Tapper

Dean won gold
ing for Great Bri
in 1999 aft
damage du
includes a con
is now talk of sel
A bout half a
estimated to h
Herzegovina in
and a survey by
in November fou
of the country’s
sidering emigrat
Christian Sc
high represent
Herzegovina, wa
the country was in
apart , with the B

BELOW
Torvill and Dean
on the ice in
the Skenderija
centre during
the 1984 Games.
Rex/Shutterstock

and bombed, and since the fi ghting
stopped it has lain derelict, ignored
by everyone except graffi ti artists and
the occasional tourist.
Now, as the 30th anniversary of the
siege approaches, the hotel is set to be
restored to its former Olympic glory.
Hotel Igman was sold last week,
at the 13th attempt, by the Sarajevo
authorities. The new owners, who
include former Bosnia -Her zegovina
international footballer Emir Granov ,
paid 5.1m Bosnian marks (£2. 2m).
Granov told local media that they
will spend a further £6m on renova-
tions, in the hope that tourists choose
Sarajevo as a new destination.
One of Granov’s fi rst decisions will
be to consider a proposal from a rival
bidder, Dimitri Hegemann, the owner

LEFT
The Igman
complex in 1984,
and, far left,
soldiers play
cards as it burns
in 1993. Reuters

When the siege of Sarajevo began in
1992, Ratko Mladić ’s Bosnian Serb
army took up positions in the moun-
tains surrounding the city.
For his headquarters, Mladić chose
Hotel Igman, a breathtaking piece of
brutalist architecture that was the
jewel of the 1984 Winter Olympics.
The hotel was part of the Olympic
village, a base for ski jumpers and
alpine skiers, but Mladić – now serv-
ing a life sentence for genocide and
crimes against humanity – used it to
oversee the shelling of the city and
his enemies used it as a prison and
execution site. During the four years
of the war, the hotel was blasted

when engineers released the fi nal,
second segment of mirrors which
slotted into the mirror’s central core,
thus completing the telescope’s vast
6.5 metre diameter mirror. Last night
engineers were completing the fi nal
latching manoeuvres that will hold
this last segment in place.
“I just feel this kind of glow in my
chest just seeing that mirror deployed
all together,” N asa scientist Michelle
Thaller said in a live webcast. In the
Nasa control room, staff from the
Webb mission team cheered.
Described as a “time machine” by
scientists, the James Webb telescope
will allow astronomers to study the
beginning of the universe shortly
after the big bang, 13.8 billion years

ago, and to hunt for signs of life-sup-
porting planets in our own galaxy.
The James Webb, named after a
former Nasa administrator, still has
to travel 400,000 miles to its desti-
nation and will then need fi ve more
months for its instruments to be care-
fully calibrated.
For astonomers, the James Webb
offers the prospect of capturing
images of the fi rst galaxies to form
after the big bang, understanding how
stars are born and evolve, and investi-
gating the potential for life to appear
in planetary systems. All this will have
to be done in a decade, its maximum
likely lifetime. After 10 years, it is
expected the telescope will run out of
fuel and slowly drift off course.

Nasa engineers yesterday completed
the fi nal unfolding of the huge pri-
mary mirror of the agency’s James
Webb space telescope. The manoeu-
vre was the fi nal step of the $10bn
observatory’s two-week deployment
phase that began with its launch on
Christmas Day.
The telescope , which has already
travelled more than 600,000 miles
across space, is the largest, most pow-
erful space telescope ever built and
had to be folded up tightly, so it would
fi t inside its Ariane 5 launch rocket.
Since then, engineers have been
directing the slow unfolding, piece


Another small step for man as Nasa unfolds space telescope


Robin McKie
Science Editor

by piece, of the observatory as it
heads on its voyage to a gravitation-
ally stable point a million miles from
the Earth. Its tennis-court size sun
shield – which will keep its delicate
instruments cold – have already been
deployed as well its secondary mirror.
Last week, Nasa began the fi nal
manoeuvres involved in deploying
the Webb’s main mirror, which will
collect light from the furthest depths
of the universe and which is made up
of 18 gold-coated segments: a cen-
tral section plus two three-segment
side panels. In a sequence of delicate
moves, the fi rst panel was success-
fully deployed on Friday, a process
that took fi ve-and-a-half hours.
And this was followed up yesterday

Nasa’s Bill Ochs
monitors the
unfolding of
the James Webb
yesterday.
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