Drifting through Cityscapes Drifting through Cityscapes MTL final copy | Page 108

Let’s use it to define Belgrade in all its complexity: with our project we tried to (re)discover the city in both its
spatial and time dimension.Cakes that were to be featured in the Recipe Book had to have some kind of a rela-
tion to a specific part of Belgrade, or to some other still present spatial object, as well as relation to a recogniz-
able time period. It is because the way the city functions and how it affects people in it always comes from its
history and layout. Narrow or wide streets, cobble stones or asphalt, baroque or post-communistic architecture:
all these things find their way of mingling with people’s first impressions, gut feelings and nostalgic thoughts. In
their heads every single place continues to live in a unique way. Those ways may turn out to later connect peo-
ple, to form memories, to evoke feelings.
deconstruct every sensory layer of it:
Our senses serve as the one and only way of being in touch with the world. Our fingers, eyes, taste buds, ears and
noses act as means of exploration and orientation in this ‘ocean of existence’, that is how we primarily navigate
ourselves on the world map. But only primarily, afterwards they connect: squares with sounds, smells and trams,
tastes and hotels. They build our own compasses, they tie our memories to geographical c-oordi- nates and ex-
act time measurements. Having realized that, we set out to make the pages of the Book asconvenient to the
cake recipe that is written on-them as possible, in every sense. If it’s an expensive cake, we’ll have an expensive
paper for the recipe. If it’s a cheap one, we’ll make sure it’s hand-written on plain brown paper, rough under
your fingers with greasy stains. If it’s a few centuries old recipe, we’ll have the pages look like that too. If it smells
of vanilla – guess what we will do! It is true that not all people have the same associa- tions when it comes to
things like this, but this is exactly why the book can serve as a map, as a mean of discovering not just facts, but
also other people’s perceptions and emotions towards everyday things taken for granted that most of us have
in common.
Let’s slice it into bite-size pieces:
Main challenge of ours was making it understandable. How do you make someone understand you, or is it even
possible to completely understand somebody other than yourself? With barriers that still seem so huge like cul-
ture, language and age, what little chances does anybody have at actually getting to someone’s most person-
al memories and emotions? We decided that we would try – even if only a handful of people really touch and
the napkin we dipped in rum and glued onto one of the pages, or if just one person-smiles at our ridiculous
footnotes or tries baking one of the cakes for real – it is still an enormous privilege to by your personal doing make
someone’s emotional string vibrate and echo their souls in a way that could perhaps inspire them, make them
meet the love of their lives, or just come to Belgrade for a slice of Moscow Hotel cake. Either way, it is a magical
thing.person smiles at our ridiculous footnotes or tries baking one of the cakes for real – it is still an enormous priv-
ilege to by your personal doing make someone’s emotional string vibrate and echo their souls in a way that
could perhaps inspire them, make them meet the love of their lives, or just come to Belgrade for a slice of Mos-
cow Hotel cake. Either way, it is a magical thing.