will be located in a 3 storey house within Diocletian's palace ground in the old town of Split. The house will provide an exhibition space, a workspace office and a residents' space. travellab will relocate it for a period and run it as a modular space for hosting exhibitions, discussions, lectures, workshops, a media library and development facilities. There will be several collaborations with local culture institutions like the film club, the Art Academy and the multimedia institute Split.

travellab wants to explore common ground and differences in international cultural practices in a globalising world. In a growing world population, more and more interlinked through internet and other media, we want to create spaces for immediate exchange between international and local artists and scientists, theorists and experts, students and the open public. We want to inspire mutual explorations of cultures, and cooperative curiosity in bringing together comparable artistic, scientific, technological projects and charity revenue events. Split / Connect aims to become an engaged and integral part of contemporary urban culture within the city of Split.

The research agenda of travellab is organised towards two complementary themes - understanding the place of the media in urban public practice and consciousness, and reflections on the society as constituted through representations and technologies. The research on media is directed towards understanding the rhythms and routines of daily life in the city as mediated through words, images and sounds. Our particular concern is with the possibilities involved in people's relationship to the media, the domain of 'needs', 'desires' work and leisure, creativity and communication practices that the media world opens up. The analysis of urban life attends to the varied dimensions of everyday life. These range from planning and housing to geography, mediated through work, leisure, transport and communication. Technological forms that underwrite contemporary urban experience as well as the social practices through which the city or different societies are imagined and acted upon will be addressed in our research.

Bringing together thinkers and writers, in order to play a part in shaping the intellectual and creative map in different parts of the world, the research focuses on democratic politics, cultures and the politics of knowledge, critical discourses on science and technology, violence, ethnicity, diversity and solidarity. All the independent research work generated in travellab's projects will be publicly accessible, on line and off-line.

In a suite of exhibitions and other events Split / Connect explores questions of cultural convergence / divergence and its infographic cartography by highlightning themes like :

For each of the topics a qualified curator and a specific group constellation will be chosen; they will be given largely freedom for their (artistic, scientific, technological) decisions, but will be encouraged to involve local and regional communities to contribute to an instant data base of Split / Connect.

Split / Connect can be evaluated, processed and made accessible through networking tools emerging from the project, i.e. for NGO purposes and shared source audience. Several lectures and presentations, Symposia at the beginning and at the end of the project invite experts in order to specify the questions, we want to deal with in Split, and evaluate the outcome.

Why Split? Split in Croatia has a very specific border position right in front of the upcoming new constellation of the EU. Furthermore as a harbour town Split symbolises the coming and going of modern nomades. Split / Connect is specially interested in including local and regional artists, authors, students and other interested groups and wants to leave some sustainable results especially for local interaction.