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A test gorup of 6 Norwegian patients with rheumatic illness were sent aborad to be a test group for rehabilitation in Igalo, Montenegro. Due to war, there had been a five-year intermission to what had been a Norwegian governmental funded rehabilitation programme since 1975, successfully rehabilitating the Northern patients in Montenegro’s warm climate. Instead of being housed in the Institute’s main buildings, the small test group were accommodated in the nearby Villa Galeb (1976), as reported in the Norwegian pamphlet Igalos venner (Friends of Igalo) no 6, 1996. One of Tito’s many villas in former Yugoslavia, Villa Galeb was explicitly built with rehabilitation facilities, bunker, living and working quarters for the head of state. After Tito’s death, caused by the chronic illness the villa was built to treat, the building temporarily housed a casino.

Commissioned and created specifically to address the thematic posed by Abi Palmer’s Crip Casino, the multimedia performance Villa Casino (2018) engages with the history of Villa Galeb interwoven with the experiences of the Norwegian patients undergoing treatment in Igalo since the programme started in 1975 until today. The reading of an essay accompanies footage of the villa that is captured using crutches instead of a tripod. This footage is intercut with a game of cards between the filmmaker herself and fellow patient Håvard Jektnes.

The live performance of this ‘essay film’ in-the-making, will discuss the history of the building and genre of the architectural essay film as a method of architectural history where personal experiences of chronic illness and the architecture of rehabilitation are included into the architectural historical narrative. The project marks the beginning of Andersen’s research project: Moving In | Moving Through: mobility and immobility in architecture of rehabilitation explored through the essay film.

With special thanks to Håvard Jektnes, Alen Filipović and Institute „DR Simo Milošević” JSC Igalo, Montenegro.

The performance was later re-worked into a film titled H for Hand (2018).