Embodied artistic interventions into the tourist field

Abstract

The following thesis and accompanying visual practice investigates the possibilities for an artist’s embodied actions to intervene within the amorphous, technological field of tourism. The research and the artwork that has developed from it has drawn upon the expanse of tourism’s history and contemporary theories of its globalised politics to enact a deconstruction of the power of contemporary tourism. This thesis investigates critical, interventionist strategies in artistic practice and, importantly, examines artists who have also used these strategies of practice to critique tourism; artists such as Ai Weiwei, Isa Genzken, Emily Jacir, Martha Rosler and Yin Xuizhen. The research enquires into interventionist strategies to create an embodied moment of dissent. The works that have been developed in relation to tourism’s broad field are intrinsic to the urban environment. They highlight contemporary spaces that are increasingly touristic, and immersed in the ephemera of the globalised, mediated landscape. It asserts that the art developed within this disciplinary area should be open-ended, experimental and ephemeral in order to be inserted effectively within the fluid space of production and experience.