This video installation emerged during a Mediterranean holiday on the cruise-liner The Royal Caribbean. The video is made through the lens of a simple handy cam and was shot very spontaneously- in a very touristy fashion just like a travelogue of a holiday maker. The use of highly saturated colors in one of the projections as opposed to the blue; and the black and white of the other two projections hints at the decadence of the act of holidaying and its place in routine life. This need for decadence as a political statement is also manifest in activities that relate to history – such as accounts of the Croatian war and also of the making of The Acropolis that are narrated by tourist guides.
The triple video projection runs in a triple time frame that is intended to suspend the time between the past and the present – that are constantly in flux with each other and often create a feeling of suspension while we escape our daily routines to touristy excursions.
The feeling of melancholia is attempted by the use of black and white in one of the projections- also referring to memory as ‘freeze-frame’ and can also be seen as a need to create a ‘value structure of memories’, by which we often tend to measure our best or most enjoyable moments in life. This is a comment upon tourism as a tool to manufacture a sellable history, culture or a ‘marketable melancholia’ that makes us forget the reality of present by manufacturing a past that caters to its ultimate consumer – the tourist.