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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Art,
Life and the Tourist's Eye What does a London exhibition of contemporary art tell us about tourism, the world it inhabits and the tourists themselves? A group of TravelSIG members went to “Universal Experience: Art, Life and The Tourist’s Eye”, at London’s Hayward Gallery on Friday 4 November, to view work by more than 50 contemporary artists. In some cases, the artist lines up squarely with the tourist in order to criticise, gently or otherwise, the tourism industry. Taft Green’s sculpture Reaction Facets: international airport uses wood, acrylic and assorted hardware to portray an airport as a Gordian knot of a place. The complexity and disorientation comes across all too clearly. Another familiar sight to modern tourists, the chain hotel, is the subject of Elizabeth Diller and R Scofidio’s Interclone Hotel. In this slide projection, the basic template of a hotel room is transported to various locations from Uganda to Mexico, simply by changing the furniture, lighting and the view from the window. Other work seeks wider targets. Marine Hugonnier’s short film The Last Tour is set in the near future, when the Matterhorn is closed to visitors. In some respects this seems to have set out, at least, as a lament for the triumph of protective legislation over opportunities for the individual to see and enjoy their world. But I got the impression that the filmmakers changed their standpoint as filming continued. Captions, intercut in silent movie style with footage of a balloon trip over the Matterhorn, criticise the tourist for not being able to recognise a beautiful view for what it is, for wanting to make the experience more synthetic. The climax features bird song, wild wolves and deer and an epilogue note that fireflies which ceased to be seen in that area by the end of the 20th century have now (i.e. in this fictional near future) returned. This viewer interpreted the message of The Last Tour as a celebration of the right of the planet to reclaim itself. The Last Tour strikes a more resonant chord than Chalet Lost History by Thomas Hirschhorn. This art installation which fills several rooms was, according to the publicity material, “galvanised by media coverage of the looting of Baghdad’s archaeological museum….[it] equates the inherent exploitation of military conquest with tourism and pornography.” The aim is noble, but the art comes across as a self-indulgent waste of space (and an awful lot of brown tape) which could have been better used for something else. A simpler, more humorous and infinitely more effective political point is made by Dinh Q Lê’s mock posters for the Vietnamese tourist industry, which seek to lure American tourists with messages such as “Come back to Saigon. We promised we will not spit on you.” There were two highlights of the exhibtion for me. Visible World 1986-2001 by Peter Fischli and David Weiss is a 28 foot long light table, which displays over 3000 transparencies of tourist destinations visited during those years. The individual photos are uniformly beautiful despite their various locations and subject matter; the composite result inspires the viewer with the artists’ enthusiasm for their endless journey of discovery. Even more astonishing is Zhan Wang’s Urban Landscape, a sculptural cityscape of London made from hundreds of stainless steel cooking utensils. On paper the notion sounds ridiculous, but the result is an imaginative tribute to London (and possibly, indirectly, to the new Asian super-cities such as Shanghai). Urban Landscape’s location on the upper foyer, so that the sounds of London accompany Zhan Wang’s vision of the city, brings the exhibition to a triumphant close First
published in VISA issue 65 (Feb 2006) |