Top of Experience - The Art of Practice in the World of Tourism
At the Lucerne University for Applied Sciences and Arts, a team of artists and scientists from art, culture and tourism are currently examined projects at the interface of art and tourism in holiday resorts of the Swiss and Austrian Alps. The team’s studies showed that these worlds of tourism have not only been colonised by urban actors and their expertise, but have long been generating their own “art forms” or forms of expression resembling art. These forms of art or expression no longer distinguish between popular and high culture, and their quality assessment does not so much depend on criteria of the science of art or economy but rather on the specific constellation of the actors involved, i.e. initiators, producers and their audience.
Our highlighted projects aim to give examples covering the breadth of the Art/Tourism spectrum. Some are considered more Art related, such as the revitalisation of a grand hotel from the Belle Epoque in Upper Engadin. A philanthropic millionaire employed internationally successful “star” architects for the revitalisation, decorated the hotel with “world class art” from a leading art gallery in Zurich and has had the surroundings of the hotel enhanced with the legacy of artists-in-residence. While on the tourism side of the project range we have the performative re-enactment of Hannibal’s historic crossing of the Alps on the Rettenbach glacier in Sölden, Tyrol. The performance was initiated by a local operator of cableways, organised by a local sports events manager who employs a dance and machine theatre expert as the author and director of the production who was recommended by the local Red Bull company. Not only is the participation of more than 400 local actors, snow cat drivers, mountain rescue helpers, skiing instructors, aerobic dancers, as well as famous actors, top athletes and even air force pilots with helicopters impressive for tourists, it also offers the local population a chance of identification. Held at the end of the season, the spectacle even fulfils the function of a carnivalesque final ritual enjoyed with relish.
While the majority of the educated middle classes and representatives of academic arts appreciate the first of the examples above, they criticise the second. A possible explanation for this criticism is the elite groups’ feeling that they need to differentiate themselves from the every-day cultures of tourism, a need that sticks obstinately with the educated middle classes. From this perspective, tourist attractions are criticised as the epitome of commodified culture.
Tourism is accused of being an abstract machinery, solely dedicated to economic exploitation and dominated exclusively by superficial appearances, by “poor” staging and “cheap” spectacle. By the same token, art, architecture and design have for some years been enjoying a new boom in tourism, reaching far beyond “culture tourism” as such. In the early times of tourism, it was the elite classes and their artists who discovered new destinations and fuelled the production of desire with their depictions and narrations. Today, art is a well-established location factor. It is, however, hardly disputed that this new form of culturalisation of tourist destinations is often mainly used for differentiating a new sort of “quality tourism” for urban elites with high incomes; it legitimises higher prices and entails social segregation.
On the basis of these cultural value parameters, cultural sciences, too, defame the practices of tourism as nothing but staged authenticity in complex scenes entailing the commodification or even destruction of local cultures. A notion embraced also by most works of art on tourism. The ambition to “immunise” art consumers against the lures of the tourism industry justifies the blunt, crude and often scandalising presentations of standard, every-day tourism. It could also be argued that this criticism helps to set oneself apart in terms of culture and to satisfy oneself of one’s role as a meta-tourist capable of reflection. The idea that “good” art could contribute to an improvement of the quality of tourist experiences is most often pronounced by the art experts themselves. It is, however, a known fact that there are various types of tourism where “art” is used and perceived differently.
What is neglected in this context is that tourist spaces and their actors are characterised by their very own, complex cultural reality. Specific rules of popular culture apply to the sphere of the extra-ordinary experience – which is no longer limited to tourism alone. The power of consumers, for example, plays an important role that should not be underestimated. Their disposition towards regressive behaviour and body-emphatic communication techniques that tends to erupt on holidays changes the perspective of perception. What may be considered good art at a museum could be interpreted as mere decoration in the spa area of a hotel – albeit the type of decoration that promotes distinction. Some tourists may have been confused by the overloaded spectacle on the glacier, but the community of the village was successfully welded together.
The examined projects showed numerous different segments of operation, social fields or milieus that can range from very small-structured groups of tinkers keen on experimenting and visionaries in auto-didactic local peer groups to highly professional groups of companies acting globally. We are interested in this very range of highly diverse degrees of professionalism both in the field of art and that of tourism. Equally interesting is the degree of locality of the actors involved in art projects in tourist resorts, since their mode of production, their appearance and communication techniques are determined by the composition and constellation of actors. The “local” aspect is always – and in art and tourism, in particular – subject to supra-regional, trans-national sometimes even “global” influences, while the “global” aspect can only unfold when placed in a local context. The expectations and intentions of functionalisation that the “arts” have with regard to the “tourism industry” and that the “tourism industry” has on “art” are often characterised by mutual misunderstanding and need to be re-investigated against the background described above.
Art & Tourism – a research project about art practices in the tourist space – is a cooperation of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Art & Design with the Institute of Tourism Economy (ITW), Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Economy, and the Institute of Construction Studies of the Architecture Department, University of Graz.
Program survey
Our highlighted projects aim to give examples covering the breadth of the Art/Tourism spectrum. Some are considered more Art related, such as the revitalisation of a grand hotel from the Belle Epoque in Upper Engadin. A philanthropic millionaire employed internationally successful “star” architects for the revitalisation, decorated the hotel with “world class art” from a leading art gallery in Zurich and has had the surroundings of the hotel enhanced with the legacy of artists-in-residence. While on the tourism side of the project range we have the performative re-enactment of Hannibal’s historic crossing of the Alps on the Rettenbach glacier in Sölden, Tyrol. The performance was initiated by a local operator of cableways, organised by a local sports events manager who employs a dance and machine theatre expert as the author and director of the production who was recommended by the local Red Bull company. Not only is the participation of more than 400 local actors, snow cat drivers, mountain rescue helpers, skiing instructors, aerobic dancers, as well as famous actors, top athletes and even air force pilots with helicopters impressive for tourists, it also offers the local population a chance of identification. Held at the end of the season, the spectacle even fulfils the function of a carnivalesque final ritual enjoyed with relish.
While the majority of the educated middle classes and representatives of academic arts appreciate the first of the examples above, they criticise the second. A possible explanation for this criticism is the elite groups’ feeling that they need to differentiate themselves from the every-day cultures of tourism, a need that sticks obstinately with the educated middle classes. From this perspective, tourist attractions are criticised as the epitome of commodified culture.
Tourism is accused of being an abstract machinery, solely dedicated to economic exploitation and dominated exclusively by superficial appearances, by “poor” staging and “cheap” spectacle. By the same token, art, architecture and design have for some years been enjoying a new boom in tourism, reaching far beyond “culture tourism” as such. In the early times of tourism, it was the elite classes and their artists who discovered new destinations and fuelled the production of desire with their depictions and narrations. Today, art is a well-established location factor. It is, however, hardly disputed that this new form of culturalisation of tourist destinations is often mainly used for differentiating a new sort of “quality tourism” for urban elites with high incomes; it legitimises higher prices and entails social segregation.
On the basis of these cultural value parameters, cultural sciences, too, defame the practices of tourism as nothing but staged authenticity in complex scenes entailing the commodification or even destruction of local cultures. A notion embraced also by most works of art on tourism. The ambition to “immunise” art consumers against the lures of the tourism industry justifies the blunt, crude and often scandalising presentations of standard, every-day tourism. It could also be argued that this criticism helps to set oneself apart in terms of culture and to satisfy oneself of one’s role as a meta-tourist capable of reflection. The idea that “good” art could contribute to an improvement of the quality of tourist experiences is most often pronounced by the art experts themselves. It is, however, a known fact that there are various types of tourism where “art” is used and perceived differently.
What is neglected in this context is that tourist spaces and their actors are characterised by their very own, complex cultural reality. Specific rules of popular culture apply to the sphere of the extra-ordinary experience – which is no longer limited to tourism alone. The power of consumers, for example, plays an important role that should not be underestimated. Their disposition towards regressive behaviour and body-emphatic communication techniques that tends to erupt on holidays changes the perspective of perception. What may be considered good art at a museum could be interpreted as mere decoration in the spa area of a hotel – albeit the type of decoration that promotes distinction. Some tourists may have been confused by the overloaded spectacle on the glacier, but the community of the village was successfully welded together.
The examined projects showed numerous different segments of operation, social fields or milieus that can range from very small-structured groups of tinkers keen on experimenting and visionaries in auto-didactic local peer groups to highly professional groups of companies acting globally. We are interested in this very range of highly diverse degrees of professionalism both in the field of art and that of tourism. Equally interesting is the degree of locality of the actors involved in art projects in tourist resorts, since their mode of production, their appearance and communication techniques are determined by the composition and constellation of actors. The “local” aspect is always – and in art and tourism, in particular – subject to supra-regional, trans-national sometimes even “global” influences, while the “global” aspect can only unfold when placed in a local context. The expectations and intentions of functionalisation that the “arts” have with regard to the “tourism industry” and that the “tourism industry” has on “art” are often characterised by mutual misunderstanding and need to be re-investigated against the background described above.
Art & Tourism – a research project about art practices in the tourist space – is a cooperation of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Art & Design with the Institute of Tourism Economy (ITW), Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – Economy, and the Institute of Construction Studies of the Architecture Department, University of Graz.
Program survey
