This thesis is concerned with the act of sightseeing, rooted in the ancient and ubiquitous concept of theoria, which combines vision and intellectual inquiry. It proposes ways of formulating and articulating an abstract stance regarding the phenomenon of tourism by means of archival research and speculative documentation. By examining three travelogues from the distant and more recent past – Hellados Periegesis, by Pausanias (2nd century), Seyahatname by Evliya Celebi (17th century), and A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople, by Lady Elizabeth Craven (18th century) – the thesis engages with the mediated notion of space, where early travelers “looked without seeing”, composing blurry islets of reality that they carried within themselves. The study of travel writing as a chimeric genre introduces a virtual character – Penelope, a scholar of the future – who engages with the mythology of tourism as a potent laboratory for speculating and inventing methods of abstraction that require imagination – around keywords such as Dream, Ruins, Ritual, Forest – rather than economic relations. This thesis concludes where it began: at the ultimate destination – the archive. The interior of the Athenian archive is rendered into Penelope’s fantastic archive of travels, a textual-photographic synthesis embodying the premise that what is worth seeing is a good story to tell!
Alle hier hochgeladenen Inhalte sind das eigene Werk der Absolventin oder des Absolventen.
