Get fit 4 Beach

10 Years ago I visited Montenegro for the first time i was in Budva for a week on Holidays. I remember the City beeing full of construction sites large empty fields surrounded by fences and an abundance of billboards promising 5 star hotels, luxus appartments and privat paradise beaches.
All this was fiction at that time and if you walked on the wilde stone beaches you could find a lot of ruins of the former yugoslavian 5 star hotels and other remains of the glorius past. In one of this ruins I found a DIY gym with lifting weights made of parts of the old hotel and trash found on the street. It got stuck in my mind this story of decay and transformation of a building to training equipment for self modification.
Now it is my second visit to montenegro I can wittnes the transformation the coast made and Budva which grew 8 times larger since my last visit. The promises on the Billboard became reallity for some People. The beaches got fit for the rich and famous, new citys where build to shine in new glory.
I decided that now as the beaches are fit they expect the people who visit to be also fitting for entreance.
The project get fit 4 beach reflects on self improvment the country and the people made to fit for an idea of exclusiveness, to fit into a exclusive billboard paradise, to be fit for the elite.
It also mirrors my perception of the artistic ressidence which is about self development through the people you meet and the new microcosmos you enter to live for a while.
Getting in touch with other characters you punp your own character, train it, refine it, you pump and lift and grow yourself.
„One day eventually you get fit enough, to enter the pumped land, the pumped beach, cross the surface of the billboard paradise and live inside it.“
the promise of another billboard...

Georgij Melnikov
2017