A statement giving a background to the
project: On questions of travel, dislocation and
nostalgia.
‘It seems to me that I
would always be better of where I am not, and this question of moving is one
of those I discuss incessantly with my soul."
Charles Baudelaire.
As a society we are
captivated by new destinations, both spiritual and worldly, immersed in a
search for something that will fill a sense of lack we cannot locate in our
present temporal and spatial home. In a world incessantly “becoming”
something else, we try to locate improved futures in examination historical
events, but both the future we desire and the past we examine have taken on
the quality of permanence both temporally and spatially, they are places
where we imagine we cease ‘becoming’. This sense of permanence, given
especially to nostalgic memories we transfer to our ambitions for the
future, we avidly want to ‘arrive’, we want to cease ‘becoming’ and ‘become’
content, but the narrative never stops.
In her book ‘Questions of
Travel’; Caren Kaplan describes tourism as heralding the post-modern. ‘It is
a product of the rise of consumer culture, leisure and technological
innovation’. She also examines the origins of what is nostalgia in Western
Culture, often born in forced exile from homeland, family and language. As a
Scot I am aware of many historical instances of forced exile, one such event
being the Highland Clearances. Many Scots chose exile through circumstance,
chiefly poverty, providing European armies throughout the 17th
and 18th centuries with countless mercenaries. This sense of
displacement is frequently interpreted and celebrated in the traditional
songs and poetry of Scotland. Today we attach these nouveau feelings
of loss to the inescapable temporal dislocation of a lived life.
Renato Rosald adds further
insights into this process and comments on how as architects of the future
we simultaneously destroy the present and give birth to nostalgias:
“Nostalgia is often
found under imperialism, where people mourn the passing of something they
themselves have transformed” and is “a process of yearning, for what one has
destroyed that is a form of mystification."
(Renato Rosald)
One source where we search
try to fill the sense of ‘lack in our lives are exotic travel brochures and
as we anticipate our next destination we are seduced by the idyllic images,
reality airbrushed out of the images, unquestioned in the readers mind. How
easily we forget fretful children, litter, the attentions of street sellers
and the building site now gracing the sea view from the hotel balcony as we
anticipate new journeys and destinations in a shrinking post-modern world.
How will the project
expresses the ideas:
The project will look at
firstly, our desire to be "anywhere else but where we are at present", (as
Baudelaire put it), secondly, the disregard of reality in the anticipation
process to travelling; and thirdly, the idea of a space as a temporal as
well as a physical site.
Strand 1: The first idea
is expressed by placing the installation looking out towards the horizon.
The horizon is a border an edge to our own space beyond which there are
imagined utopias where we will find contentment; where we can see or imagine
other travellers achieving some kind of Nirvana in imagined utopias both
actual and metaphysical.
Strand 2: When we look at
travel brochures or look at holiday programmes on television we are shown
and anticipate destinations devoid of fretful children, regulations,
building sites and litter etc. etc. Much as we are aware of the pitfalls of
visiting different cultures, the possibility for disappointment is almost
forgotten as we anticipate our dream location. This ability to enlarge our
expectations is reflected in the size of the piece, two and a half times
normal size.
Strand 3: The historical
and nostalgic possibilities
for space. The deckchair and the parasol iconic pieces which reflect a
bygone era, linking times in the same space, buckets and spade linked to our
childhood.
Completed Project Statistics:
N.B. The estimate
for the viewing audience is purely guesswork, as the piece was sighted
between the large north car park and access to the central beach in Skegness
numbers who saw the work were certainly much higher, also being sited 200yds
north of the pier the work was in a prominent position. The estimated
numbers are for those we thought took note of the work without the direct
engagement of commenting on the work or taking photographs within the work.
The figure for the
Festival of Bathing Beauties weekend are not included in the totals as this
event was not a part of the original project proposal.
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