Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.02.2011, Qupperneq 24

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 2 — 2011 The project is currently unfolding in the Reykjavík Art Mu-
seum’s Hafnarhús. The exhibition will run until April 10, and
the conference takes place the first week of February.
‘Practicing Nature-Based Tourism’ is an international, interdisciplinary conference held in con-
junction with the exhibition and dedicated to nature-based tourism and Iceland’s role as a tourist
destination. One of the conference’s keynote speakers will be Lucy R. Lippard. It takes place at
Hafnarhús, February 5-6.
art | As means of philosophising about stuff
Our desire to travel and the
nature of our relationship
with the places that we go
to see is the topic of an in-
ternational art exhibition, conference
and publication entitled ‘Without Desti-
nation’ at Reykjavík Art Museum’s Haf-
narhús. The project proposes an insight
into man’s need to position himself
within the world, into how he relates to
his environment and how this relation-
ship has developed towards what we
today know as tourism.
Coming from an art background as
curator, I collaborate with the geogra-
pher, Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir, on the proj-
ect as a whole. Having both worked as
tour guides in Iceland, we find it inter-
esting to observe the local changes in
the field of tourism over the last fifteen
years. I had not been on the road for
a while so I decided last summer to do
a ten day tour with a group of people
from all parts of the world, partly as
preparation for the project ‘Without
Destination’.
MounTain hiGh, valley low
Talking to travellers about their expec-
tations and experience is very inter-
esting, reflecting the extent to which
people attempt to match a certain im-
age that they have in their minds with
what they encounter. It is very different
how much room people leave beyond
the preconceived idea when taking in
the environment. It also matters a great
deal how people are introduced to the
places they go to, what sort of history
and infrastructure you find between a
traveller and a place.
A walk in Stórurð in the East Fjords,
where we stopped the coach in a moun-
tain pass and followed a trail to a valley
of extraordinary beauty, left everyone
with a different personal experience.
However, a walk through the valley of
Dimmuborgir near Lake Mývatn, which
offers no less a magnificent landscape,
seemed to make no special impression
on people.
The fact that in Stórurð we met
only one other group, whereas in Dim-
muborgir there were around thirty,
might have had something to do with it.
Or was it the fact that someone recently
decided that Dimmuborgir should be
the home of “The Icelandic Yule Lads”?
Now, you can follow the trail down in
the valley guided by signs displaying
the rascals goofing around. A shop
selling Yule Lad kitsch has risen on top
of a cliff overlooking the valley, making
sure that it does not escape your sight
wherever you may find yourself in this
magical landscape.
In Iceland today a tour guide can
still take groups to both kinds of sites,
where on the one hand people will
leave with a personal impression of a
place in their mind, and where on the
other hand they will take with them an
identical image of a destination on their
cameras. The change I have noticed in
the last fifteen years within the field of
local tourism is that it is increasingly
leaning towards the latter notion.
anoTheR TiMe, anoTheR place
The elements at stake in a personal
engagement with the environment are
subject to many contemporary art-
ists and the aim with the exhibition is
to bring together works that elaborate
on this engagement. In many different
case studies offered by artists they re-
fer to our capability to find ourselves in
two places at the same time–one physi-
cally in the here and now, while in our
minds we can be in another place and
another time entirely. Some projects
aim at uniting both senses in the same
moment within the museum experi-
ence, while others play with this double
feature relating to a faraway place in
the present work.
Another repeated element in the
works is the notion of the creative rela-
tionship of an individual with his or her
surroundings within a constant state
of flux. The interplay of identity, place
and time are made to provide unlimited
possibilities for unique experiences
where- and whenever. As the ventrilo-
quist Willie Tyler was quoted saying:
“The reason lightning doesn't strike
twice in the same place is that the same
place isn't there the second time.”
This is how Fiete Stolte, a young
German artist, displays a series of Pola-
roid photographs taken from the same
lighthouse tower in the West Fjords.
Eight similar sequences show the same
surroundings depending on time of
day and weather conditions. The same
place, yet always different.
Húbert Nói Jóhannesson creates
paintings that refer both to specific
places within the museum–literally
one-to-one paintings of architectural
details of the building–and also to far-
away places, specified with accurate
GPS markers.
The origin of tourism as we know it
today is the topic of the Swedish art-
ist Johan Furåker and local artist Unnar
Örn who both study historical archives
in their work. When the European mid-
dle class started having leisure time
and could save some money, travelling
soon became an important factor of its
identity. Certain places became land-
marks through which a person could
establish their status in society.
This trend also came to Iceland, if
somewhat later than it began in Eu-
rope, and people would create their
own leisure destinations on the island.
The notion of travel and the relationship
people have with places remains quite
similar today as it did in the heyday of
tourism over a century and a half ago.
These similarities are underlined in
works that bring the viewer back and
forth in the history of wanderlust.
The jouRney, noT The deSTina-
Tion
‘Without Destination’ is a project that
raises questions about where Iceland
is heading today as a tourist destina-
tion. With the steady increase of local
and international travellers wanting to
visit the island, some places are already
facing overexposure and reaching their
limits of sustainability. Still, it becomes
more and more apparent that tourism
is not as much defined by the number
of tourists as it is by the mindfulness of
the toured. How is Iceland living up to
the challenge of being a popular des-
tination?
While the element of individual en-
terprise may be charming it is another
thing when a nature reserve of rare
beauty like Dimmuborgir becomes
someone’s playground for the market-
ing of the Icelandic Yule Lads. In an
era of expanding experience economy
it seems somewhat anachronistic to
steer tourism down the road of prod-
uct-centred economy. The valley, in this
case, has changed from being a place
of limitless experience, to which visi-
tors may relate on their own terms and
turned into a fixed destination ready for
consumption.
It is in the hope that such develop-
ment does not happen by mere over-
sight, that the project ‘Without Desti-
nation’ is introduced. In her book ‘On
the Beaten Track’, American writer
and curator Lucy R. Lippard debates
whether the term sustainable tourism
may be an oxymoron, given the inevi-
table change the industry brings about
wherever it is introduced. Here in Ice-
land we still have the chance to at least
try and rope the two notions together.
wheRe To, FolkS?
The exhibition ‘Without Destination’ at
Hafnarhús is divided into four parts:
‘Wanderlust’ focuses on tourists and
travel while 'Place' examines the rela-
tionship between the traveller and the
environment. Both themes are repre-
sented through new and recent inter-
national works on display in the galler-
ies.
‘Travelogue’ presents diverse in-
dividual experiences in narrative form
with a programme of film, video and
sound art running all day long in a spe-
cially designed black box. The schedule
is presented online.
Finally, ‘Trail’ guides the viewer
from place to place within the museum
through a poster exhibition created by
the Institut für Raumexperimente [The
Institute for Spatial Experiment], which
is an educational research facility at the
Berlin University of the Arts, directed
by artist Ólafur Elíasson.
words
Markús Þór Andrésson
illustration
Þorgerður Ólafsdóttir, You've Got
a Face With a View, 2011
wheRe To, FolkS?
“In Iceland today a tour guide can still take groups
to both kinds of sites, where on the one hand people
will leave with a personal impression of a place in
their mind, and where on the other hand they will
take with them an identical image of a destination
on their cameras. The change I notice in the last
fifteen years within the field of local tourism is that
it is increasingly leaning towards the latter notion.