Being There by Anders Weberg and Robert Willim

http://www.beingthere.se

Anders Weberg // Video
Robert Willim // Sound

Duration: 6min40sec

Tourism is growing in many parts of the world. Curious people, with bags and cameras, are in search of various exciting experiences. Places of interest are visited and documented. An important ingredient of the tourism industry is the concept of authenticity and the lure of the unique. But the question is: What would be the most authentic experience? Attractive places are targets for more than travel agencies.

This art project twists the authenticity hunt. We offer a number of audiovisual excursions beneath the gloss of the tourism rhetoric. Six films, imagining six places. It is an attempt to disclose the nervous system that is underlying tourist experiences.

The places we have chosen are high density, they are tourist magnets and global hotspots. They are places associated with pleasure, but also with terror. With the shortfilms coupled to the different places we want to examine the tension between pleasure and fear.

The films are made solely from clips out of tourist movies and similar material. The clips have been twisted into a surreal atmosphere. And the sound accompanying the visuals are based on manipulations of one or two sounds that are often used to give stereotypical associations to the various places, eg. demo sounds from sample libraries. The audiovisual whole express an evocative imaginary geography.