tourism dot com - smoking butts from ashtrays (2-video installation, 2008) explores the ubiquitous iconography surrounding the tourist trade, arguably the most powerful and pervasive economic tool swaying the globalised world. Tourism and travel are not just about tantalising city trips and beach cultures, but also a mass leisure industry grounded in politics, myth and spectacle. This work layers divergent cultural contexts as a subtle way to define the utopian touristy promise from its repercussions. Photos and film shot in Malta, UK, Spain, China, and Belgium, are appended to sound tracks from Jack Kerouac's travel-logue On the Road. In a second projection, text rolls against a backdrop of power buildings extracted from current UN and EU documents on eco-tourism. Tourism.com is a joint collaboration between Ruth Bianco and Richard Davies. more..
