Tourist Information
performance/video series
This multi-year project grew out of a residency in Rejmyre, Sweden in 2007, as part of the curatorial platform Rejmyre Matters. I've returned every year since and become co-director of a long-term, place-based research project in the town. Each year, I’ve created a new performance document or video work to be displayed in the Rejmyre Tourist Bureau. The videos are presented, like all the materials around them, as tourist information. I’m interested in exploring this genre: the works are the information of a tourist, information for tourists, touristed information, tourist information.
A pilgrim in Rejmyretourist information
In my fourth summer in Rejmyre, I find myself spending a lot of time on the computer. I retreat into tourist videos from India, shot by trekkers and uploaded to Youtube. I'm particularly drawn to the image, in the background of some of the videos, of an occasional prostrating pilgrim making his way, one body length at a time, along the same path as the tourist. I study their costume and practice their movements. Borrowing a leather apron from the blacksmith, I set out on my own prostration walk from our group studio to the only food and convenience store in Rejmyre. I'm interested in the embodied experience of mediating this ritualized, Buddhist practice of traveling to a sacred site, by transporting it to a cultural context in which its meaning is far less transparent. It is a mediation of a mediatized ritual, a remake of a genuine gesture, a genuine gesture.
video designed for the tourist information office
-> more on the Rejmyre residency