Formal models, which we have seen last week, are a form of art too. The main difference between such models and works of art lies in the method. Unlike artistic models, in effect, formal models are produced in a Popperian perspective: they are refutable, in the sense that they formalize hypotheses that can be rejected if empirical observations contradict them. Popperian science is not the only way to produce scientific discourse, though. To reach an in deep understanding of phenomena, one needs to go beyond words, beyond categories. Understanding something is also about embracing the undetermined part of it, about making place for the CATEGORIAL IN BETWEEN, for the poetic suspension of saying above the already said. More simply, art is also a perception trainer: its forms can multiply your ABILITIES TO READ SPACE. As far as mobility in the arts is concerned, it is present since the very beginnings of art itself. We cannot make a complete list. Taking exclusively literature, three major antique works in which the voyage is an intrigue in itself can be cited: Homer s Odyssey (cf. Kafka) Petron s Satyricon [see also Fellini 1969] where a young man travels through Neronian Rome, accomplishing what could be called a deconstructive voyage in which the decay of the Empire is revealed. Apuleius Metamorphoses (2 nd c. AD), in which the protagonist wants to be transformed into a bird but becomes an ass. In his journey he tries to find a way of 1
becoming man again. It is full of misfortunes and discovery of the ways of the ordinary people and folk tales of his time. Both Satyricon and Metamorphoses give unique access to the everyday life of ordinary people in the roman empire. 1
To understand the link in contemporary art and tourism, an example: Lausanne, July 31st, 2007, candles lit by passers by (tourists, locals visiting their own city, passers by), distributed according to a pattern designed by the artist Muma [see http://www.allumonslausanne.ch]. Local authorities and private actors (store owners) have agreed to switch off public light and shop vitrines during the event. Without the participation of these actors and of the tourists, this artistic event would not have been possible. On the other hand, it attracted many people to the city center. The roles of spectator and participant have been combined. Similar events have been organized by the artist in Romainmôtier (CH), Córdoba (SP), Barcelona (SP), Prangins (CH), Pully (CH), Vallauris (F), Assens (CH), Girona (S), Neuchâtel (CH) With respect to contemporary art, two points have to be stressed: 1. Art is an important component of touristic incentive. 2. Particularly in the contemporary art, the tourist is often not only a spectator of an event but plays an active role in it. 2
See also notes on unemployment and underemployment as a touristic condition in Urry [in Apostolopoulos 1996, 129]. 3
A selection from the filmography of Jim Jarmush. Mystery Train (1989) :very different people who end up sleeping in the same hotel, including a Japanese couple that came to Memphis to visit Elvis s first recording studio. Night on Earth (1991): short stories in taxis in five cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, Oslo. Dead Man (1995): a man shot, traveling as he slowly dies through American wilderness, led by an Indian outcast, in the middle of a dying culture. Broken Flowers (2005): a older ladies man learns he has a son and travels across the USA to find him. His journey can be considered as a search for an identity which he seems to lack. The Limits of Control (2009): a hired killer travels through Spanish cities, following a decreasing level of urbaneness, Madrid, Salamanca, pueblo in Southern Spain. In each city or transportation mean, he meets artists, scientists, creators of all kind. Meeting them is apparently necessary for making him capable of accomplishing his task. At the end of the movie, this task turns out to be to exterminate the root of evil: an man in a heavily protected bunker, perhaps an archetype of a functionalistic vision of the world? 4
The yoyo: an allegory of leisure mobility, coming back and forth without other purpose than going back and forth. A synecdoche of the touristic movement. 5
A series of scenes and objects might attract your attention in Permanent Vacation. Meeting alterity in archetypical images: The woman speaking another language, living in her own World. 6
Meeting alterity in archetypal images: A silent woman at the movie theater, absorbed in her book (i.e. again in her own world). The contact can only be established through an otherwise unnecessary inter object. Pop corn in this case. 7
Tourism and narcistic self contemplation, whatever the place. 8
The world always asks an existential question. This question remains silent as long as you keep absorbed in a task. The tasks imposed by the realm of things are the main vector of what Heidegger calls Seinsvergessenheit (the forgetting Being). Stopping to stare out the window calls us back into the realm of questioning. 9
As Musil [1930] suggests, the danger that befalls the mobile individual is being nothing but an empty shell, without a center. In Permanent Vacation, the character gets lost in the extra ordinary, he never brings anything home, so the home itself becomes an empty shell. 10
Returning back to the impossible origin that perhaps does not exist or is no more: the house destroyed by war, the mother destroyed by craziness. A profound homelessness is the destiny of the drifter. 11
Students 2010 comment 1: Note the parallel between dancing in the apartment, and dancing on the roof of the building: once in the proximity to his girlfriend (life? expectation?), one in the proximity of the precipice (death?), without taking note of them. There seems to be a ascending and a declining form of drifting. But the nature of drifting excludes its subject from the ability to decide on such qualities. Only the external spectator sees the difference. Students 2010 comment 2: The protagonist cannot be considered as a real tourist because he never creates a place. His mobility has no object. 12
Students 2010 comment 3: The music is gloomy, uncanny all along. A more joyful theme resounds when the French traveller is met, saying New York will be my Babylon, Paris will be your Babylon. An eventual goal suddenly seems possible to reach. But again, the uncanny music theme comes back while on the boat, as if the doubt set in again, as if the protagonist was deemed to never find peace. This idea is supported by the fact that, at the beginning of the movie, the protagonist is already in Paris (the whole movie is a flashback), noting he only traveled from here to here. Some students argue that the French traveller reached his goal. But did he? While we see the boat leaving and the gloomy theme is played we are with the protagonist on the boat but we also see New York, where the French traveller his... Other students hold that Allie (the protagonist) and the French traveller eventually do converge to something, namely to the archetype of the moving person. 13