Starting situation/Expose
Tourism is a field of exchange and the transitory, where reality and images meet each other, where travelers visualize the "strange”, justify stereotypes and at the same time find themselves mainly confronted with their "own self”. During holidays, a temporary exchange of role and an experience of ‘the revaluation of your own status’ can be created: Employees and service personnel that have to stick to certain orders in their daily routine and at home, can become someone to give orders and to be served in countries with a lower gross national product (which was true in the 1960ies for all southern destinations in Europe and nowadays still is true for many destinations in the global south). Even the Middle-European middle class changes temporarily into an economical elite. In tourism deficits of the daily life routine are compensated as well and normality is transcended by an aimed arrangement of all sorts of exceptional situations (emotional, psychical and physical).
Besides soldiers, missionaries, pilgrims, or researchers, tourists provide usually the very first contact for the local population of remote areas with an aristocratic, wealthy or urban, intellectual elite. Also the appearance of "hippies”, "Germans” and "Europeans” has lead to a somewhat brutal confrontation with other cultural values and social habits. This also makes it a starting point for new desires and the refusal of new life styles. Personal, or "natural” so to speak, hospitality has transformed under the double pressure of the mass and the cultural confrontation into a professionalized and economized service. Therefore, moneymaking opportunities in tourism and the contact to other life models in many remote regions, offered the less privileged population and especially some of the women the chance to get emancipated from local forces. At the same time the traditional social network of a village was shifted and the village, by the influence of its urban guests, becomes more urbanized.
Tourism is a product of modern life, a phenomenon of industrial society. Equally with the increasing alienation of the working and living conditions within society, the desire for a pretend authentic refuge in a mainly untouched landscape is very attractive. This illuminated look on the landscape-and the buildings that are embedded in it-was constituted by wealthy city-people who first went for the Lower Alps or for the traces of colonial adventurers, business travelers, missionaries, and pilgrims before exploring the whole world. The images that they brought back from their trips, again dominated the level of expectation of the following social classes. The increasing affordable means of transportation (railway, cars, airplanes) and the partly extremely cheap wage-costs of the service personnel in the traditional tourist destinations have turned the formerly elite escape from the cities into a mass-phenomenon. The "democratization” of tourism was also gained by the exploitation of labor. And it furthermore has created the formation of buildings (highways, airports, hotels) that are often in contrast to the original myths of the "authentic”. Tourism represents one of the most visible industrial sectors, even if this remains almost unnoticed by a majority of tourists. The location of production and the relationships that belong there are, however, directly present. The guest is somehow in the middle-in the same house (hotel) or in the same boat (cruise-ship): During her/his overnight stay in a big hotel or when using a transport or an event-infrastructure, she/he finds her/himself in the middle of a kind of factory.
Tourist destinations and event architectures, in new "theme-parks”, as well as in traditional regions, are characterized by a front and back page: The front page serves the recreation of the tourists. It is usually presented in form of a created culture-and event landscape respectively in form of a spectacular infrastructure for events and corresponds with the taste and the expectations of the audience. The back page however, serves the accommodation of the service personnel and the enormous technical infrastructure that is necessary for the supply and disposal of tourists. Despite this direct proximity it cannot necessarily be said, that in tourism the conditions of production are especially transparent. The almost omni-present backstage-aspect is, as a rule, faded out and overseen.
Deriving from this mass tourism, which is tightly connected to regulated labor, at the moment a new and more important economical sector of tourism, entertainment industry and gastronomy is developing parallel to the decrease of classical working and spare-time models. Its economical relevance is not restricted anymore to traditional travel destinations and regulated vacation times. With shopping-and seminar tourism, party miles and adventure parks in almost every town and for any taste, including wellness and health offers, tourism gains more importance in daily life. Tourism also has got a transforming effect in respect to the total economy.
Like in other industries, in tourism, mainly migrants are used for the work intensive roles, known as little "qualified”, service sector positions. Besides the fact, that as well as the migrant personal the tourists equally meet "abroad”, their paths also cross in other respects. This means, that work migration from Italy, Spain and Turkey to Germany into Switzerland is effective at the same time, as mass tourism from the North Europeans towards the South. The contact with the local population that had never taken place during the vacation, now can be made at home at the Italian restaurant around the corner. Migrants from outside of Europe try themselves on their own routes, disguised as tourists, to ignore the increasing isolation of the Schengen –area. More and more often e.g. during the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa tragic accidents with numerous casualties happen. The tragedy somehow practically happens in the field of vision of the holidaymakers at that time sitting on the beach.
The expression "dark tourism” finally describes that, while looking for the ultimately authentic, the trip itself leads to places of catastrophe and horror-from real scenes of action from history to actual regions of crisis. Here, now and then, former opponents or their descendants meet at former places of horror.
Aims of the project
Inspired by the previous, which briefly described actual developments in tourism, this project "Backstage” examines different transitory moments and the therefore created visibility and invisibility in social, cultural, real and also in created space. For example, we can name the intermediate functions and the exchange functions which are effective in tourism, alongside the borders between stage and backstage, "familiarities” and "strangeness”, here and there, daily routine and adventure, guest and employees. This concerns culture-historical, social, ecological, building-typology and logistic aspects, aspects of forms of living-and communication and the social organization, which tourism has created and made possible. Particularly interesting are thereby the service personnel’s point of view on the actors and on the audience and the point of view on and from the other side, which is the side turned away from the "classic” tourist point of view.
The call’s target group
This call is directed towards culture scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, scientists of history, geographer, architects, artists, activists and filmmakers (as well as towards interdisciplinary work teams).
We expect texts, pictures, and films about the topic as well as interdisciplinary project ideas. Documentation of already realized projects with a similar thematic orientation could also be interesting.
Usage of material and further steps
Submitted artistic and scientific contributions, texts, pictures, films and project ideas to the topic will be shown in winter 2003/2004 in the context of the exhibition in Forum Stadtpark Graz within the formal set of a remade travel agency and will be made accessible for the audience. At the same time there will be a public seminar with chosen authors of submitted papers as well as with guests from cultural sciences, architecture, geography, and art ...in which these subjects are expanded on.
The goal of this first project level is the formation of an interdisciplinary working group for the realization of a representative exhibition and to provide a publication which should go far beyond a regular seminar folder or exhibition catalogue.