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convey a hyperobject with a tourist attraction

2023-04-30

2 minute read

I have got to be honest: Traveling is a great deal of empty and hollow movement. It's weird and I feel weird about it.

I told CC my idea about travel as a cake. The tourist parts, sight-seeing etc are the icing. The 'cake' is the reason to be there, some kind of objective. Otherwise it's too sickly, too much. I'm trying to apply this to Brazil now, to give myself some kind orientation while I'm here. Months ago I thought I would try to do portuguese lessons, now I don't care about that too much. Now, I'd like to emulate my Hobart trip a year and a half ago. Another residency, this time in Ilha Grande, trying to get through a list of projects.

back in time

April 7 - April 10

I stayed with A and V in Esperanza, Santa Fe. I've know them for over 10 years, we all went to school together in Lago Puelo. Had an awesome time, I get on really well with V. He gave me a bunch of good artist recommendations:

We did a lot of lazing about, drinking beer and hanging out. It was awesome. I love doing nothing with friends. Weirdest thing about esperanza was all the sanduich-de-miga they have on their menus. Like, every restaurant had it and always like 10 different types.

We went out clubbing, had fun. There's one boliche in the town and it's huge, people travel from other towns to visit it. Insane.

it's hard to get back into journaling.

Recounting my trip is uninspiring, and not a fun journaling experience. I really do want to reflect on the experience, but I can't stand the retelling, and I don't have it in me to make it more interesting.

I'll see how other people have done, see if there's any ideas online.

museums

Yesterday I went to the Museu do Amanhã. It's a nice building, lovely to walk around. As a "museum", it's dissapointing. Interactive and informative exhibits remain difficult, and they didn't pull it off. Everything felt like a glorified high school project poster. The premise of a museum seems to be "it should teach people". How do we measure that? Which pull quote did they stop to read? How long did they stand before the wall of text the curator wrote? Can they apply what they learnt?

The museum is trying to bring to mind the passage of time and reality of climate disaster, how it's changing our planet and how that effects us. I'm yet to read the book, but I know Timothy Morton has written a book called Hyperobjects. Here's the description from the page linked:

The world as we know it has already come to an end
Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place.

It is hard to convey a hyperobject with a tourist attraction.

listening to

Gustavo Santaolalla - Way Up

questions