In the last few terms, I've had the chance to study and travel in Europe, an experience which has affected me in many different levels, personally and artistically. So this term, I've decided to focus the theme of my work on examining relationships between art and traveling.
So, to outline some components that I wish to explore relating to this theme:
- Art and traveling on a personal and emotional level
- Emotions and experience
- Experience of being in a new, unfamiliar environment
- Heighten senses, amplified colors, sounds, feelings
- Goal: keep memories vivid as I have experienced them
- Translate memories into tangible experience to viewers
- Question: how to fully capture a moment in time and all sensational components
- Examples:
- Art of Travel: Nina Pagalos
- Artist spent summer in Italy, try to capture and retain elements of her experience
- A lined made by walking: Richard Long
- Land artist, art made by walking in landscapes
- “walking is art” – travelling is a type of walking
- Explore relationships between time, distance, geography
- Drawing references from literature that I feel I could incorporate in my works:
- Le Petit Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
- Enlightenment through exploration
- Both of outside world and reflection of oneself
- Danger of narrow-mindedness
- Ignorance, incomplete perspective
- Stereotypes, prejudices
- Candide (Voltaire)
- Strong theme of travel and quest
- Main character traveled throughout the story, but ended the book with him saying "Il faut cultiver notre jardin" / “we must go and work our garden”
- Questioning value/importance of travel verses self-reflection and growth
- Art and traveling on a social and perceptual level
- Popularity of travelling
- The “other” to your everyday life
- A break from everyday routine
- Graph explains process of traveling
- While you’re “away” in limital zone, social norms are suspended
- Rude tourist behavior
- Visual experience of tourism/traveling
- Visual experience it the most important element in Tourism
- Emphasized by technology: photography, film, and online photo blogs (Flickr, Instagram, Facebook…etc.)
- Camera become crucial part of the experience: many take photos of site before looking at them with their own eyes
- The tourist gaze (John Urry)
- Compares visual “gaze” of tourist with “medical gaze” which is related to treatment and medicine
- The term refers to the way a tourist perceives the tourist experience, which has been created socially by the tourists themselves
- The set of expectations that tourists place on local populations in search of “authentic experience”
- In his concept, Urry also mentioned the importance of “reconstruction of ethnicity” of locals
- Tendency for population in host country to act out cultural patterns and behaviors that they believe would satisfy the tourist most
- These 2 social phenomenal are often fueled by media and local government
- Examples of works related to tourism
- Thomas Struth's "Museum Photographs"
- show tourists as they wander around museums looking at works
- They just "have to" be there and be seen contemplating the works
- You look at them and find it a bit repulsive then you realize you're just one of them, no matter how educated and refined you might be
No comments:
Post a Comment