cRule Britannia, Solo Show. Chicago IL, 2008.
Gosia Koscielak Gallery. 1646 N. Bosworth Ave. Chicago, IL 60622.
Artist Statement:
©Rule Britannia:
The Fetisization of the Travel Experience.
The works in this show are ostensibly about connections, similarities, differences and ultimately ‘foreign’ places. Across global cities there exists a readable narrative in which similarities form a point of connection which spans geographical distance. Our excitement on travelling to these places is often marred by an unnerving feeling of having been there before. In this series of video and interactive works I begin to explore these cityscapes and their intersections through the similarities which render a place knowable yet different. These similarities are explored through the lens of the traveler, performing a point of intersection through the process of travel. While travelling, places are seen through a ‘tourist gaze’ inferring and conferring ‘Otherness’ upon the local populations. However, instead of focusing on the fetishization of this Otherness if we seek to explore the intersections of similarity which tie global populations, we can highlight these points of hybridity which signal a new understanding. To this end the threads in these images and visuals become part of a multi-layered narrative exploring global linkages, recording and memory; how we record only that which is different or unique to us. Travelling in these places becomes a performance of these points of intersection, both past and present.
For many locations, the past and present coalesce through strands of the colonial past. Each of the places in these works have a colonial connection to the British, some direct and some indirect. Post-colonial states bear the scars of colonization tied up into their group subjectivities; therefore the colonial past cannot be separated from the colonial present. For these locales there is a connection and an implied understanding of place. The assumed superiority and paternalistic attitude of colonizers becomes reflected in present day exoticization of ‘other’ locales. In effect we project our own meanings, expectations and prejudices into foreign realities and as such they change and become a part of the collective psycho-geography.
The modes of transport chosen (train, foot, bus, and airplane) are also about the experiences of travelers where the bland and mundane become fetishized and exoticized. For many, the tour bus is the ultimate symbol of the inauthentic and packaged tourist process. However, when travelling on a local bus the position is reversed and the ‘traveler’ (not tourist) acquires the ‘authentic’ travel experience by engaging on a local level with their surroundings. This encounter then becomes somehow more authentic than other travel specifically because it engages with the mundane and un-exotic. These travelogue films reflect the fetisization of the mundane through recording these everyday experiences.
The works further explore the mediation of the travel experience wherein one can visually travel to these ‘exotic’ locales without leaving ones’ own geographic location. The process of viewing the journeys thus performs another point of global intersection between the audience and the location. The work becomes a symbolic simulation of travel; the viewers become willing travelers in a projected reality. The experience as seen through the video camera lens is paralleled with the actual experience of being there, asking the audience to question their own expectations of travel and cultural encounters. The works therefore become a meditation on the nature of wanderlust and what is means to seek the authentic in locations, spaces and societies.
