Tourism
vs.
Anti-Tourism
Tourism
Fully commodified representations of place rendered Ideal.
Tourism, in all of its forms, delivers upon expectation. The “destination” is a promise made and, for the satisfied customer, a deliverable. Experiences are collected, as supported by evidentiary mountains of souvenirs. At bottom, tourism is a form of consumption. No doubt, travel can be edifying and rewarding, but what of encounters absent of expectations? The consumption of place inevitably produces certain undigestible kernels, that which escapes and leads us to…
Anti-Tourism
The question for anti-tourism is simple: “What happened?” Be this as it may, the response to this query is anything but simple, given that even what appears as quotidian inevitably harbours unexpected and extraordinary events. Anti-tourism seeks to blow up the totalizing narratives of state-sponsored tourism with many different perspectives, replacing the classical with all manner of minor histories.
Off-centre wanderings that oppose “Ideal” conceptions of place with the actual material REAL.
View Anti-Tourism Projects
The artist would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and SK Arts for their generous support of the Anti Tourism project in all of its incarnations: #everysordiddetail in Victoria, Treaty Six: The Smooth and the Striated in Edmonton, and with future projects planned for 2022.
