In the Antropofàgia casual proposal, I mention the idea of ​​the unknown city and I speak of the artist-tourist “artourist”, to adopt a position towards the place. And that idea, not knowing anything, will be one of the key directions of the project to start operating in São Paulo. The fact of not having made any prior consultation with my journey, even a visit to Google-Earth, not having brought any guide, not having read any book that happens in this city. All this in a way has been a “forced” option that avoids the trip previously experienced from the outside, falsified.

 

 

“From Goethe to Baedeker, through the Murray, the romantic traveller’s spirit has been lost along the way and with it, the possibility of thinking and judging of which Goethe stands for is greatly reduced if not eliminated. [...]. Baudrillard illustrates the current state of prostration of reality with the Borges story, in which the cartographers of the Empire drew a map so detailed that eventually covered the territory with absolute accuracy, and then rotted on it and got confused within itself in its final decline. Murray or Baedeker’s guide, like the map of the Borgean cartographers, promotes the definitive and previously agreed reading of the sites, intended for mass consumption. And Disneyland is the text of a country that does not exist, a hyper-real installed on a cleared area, a non-place created for tourists and a non-resident population. [...]. Of the prevalence of the map, guide or a non-place as hyper-real as Disneyland, a fine case is Des Esseintes, the character with whom Esther Allen illustrates the extent of how a guide can ever replace the direct experience of a place. Des Esseintes is a character from Á Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans, who in 1884, concludes that to know London is not necessary to travel to London: ” He thinks of going to London [...] but the rainy day in Paris, a visit to an English bookstore where he buys a Baedeker on London, and dinner in an English pub surrounded by English tourists convince him that there is no need to undertake the journey. Perusing the Baedeker, he reads a description of some English paintings that he has already seen in a traveling exhibition; his evening in Paris has provided him with all expected sensations that he expected to experience at the sight of London. “