'Tourism is the march of stupidity. You’re expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travellers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don’t know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysenteric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event. “
– Don DeLillo, The Names
The seminar will critically and systematically examine the contemporary notion of tourism through its resulting environmental, social and economic impact around the world and will evaluate its role and relevance for our planet in crisis. In particular, the seminar will source and analyse existing as well as new tourism alternatives through the lens of a concept called ‘nanotourism’.
nanotourism is a constructed term describing a creative critique to the current environmental, social and economic downsides of conventional tourism, defined as a participatory, locally oriented, bottom-up alternative.
It operates as a social tool to stimulate mutual interaction between provider and user by co-creation or exchange of knowledge. It is not about scale, but is more an ability to construct locally-specific, responsible experiences from the bottom-up, using exclusively local resources.
Ultimately, nanotourism is beyond tourism: it is more an attitude to improve specific everyday environments and to stimulate new local economies.
A series of individual and collaborative presentations will focus on developing a collective, critical discussion based on the following criteria, which constitute the dictionary of what nanotourism is and is not.
critical I conformist
confronting current realities and presumptions of tourism
site-specific I site generic
extremely responsive to contexts, therefore perpetually unique
educative I non educative
stimulating knowledge exchange and creating development
inventive I conventional
progressive, adding new values and creating fresh potentials
responsible I irresponsible
non-intrusively related to the community and environment
bottom-up I top-down
processing local information to form higher level systems
local I global
produced with local support and supporting locals
participatory I passive
fostering co-creation and exchange between users and providers
social I unsocial
collaborative, community oriented and relating to people
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INTRO MEETING:
Thursday, 03.10.2019
Projektraum 13
17:00 - 19:00
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The course will constitue of 10 lectures, one per week until the end of 2019 (Christmas break).
For the completion of the course, students will need to do the following work:
- a presentation relating to one of the criteria of nanotourism (done individually or in a group)
- a written essay analysing and comparing different concepts discussed during the lecture series
