Deak Dorottya
Dog days
Dog days
Deak Dorottya
"The spectacle is what remains, once activity is stripped away; it is the opposite of dialogue. Wherever representation becomes independent, the spectacle regenerates itself.”
(Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle)
‘Dog days’ is a commentary on the extremes of the mass-touristic experience. It is the photographic documentation of the collective performance of an exemplary, pre-designed ‘visit’. It is also a visual contemplation on how such a trip changes our point of view and means of connection with the surrounding world. The trip narrated here, is the one created by Timanfaya National Park in Lanzarote, a highly designed bussing experience on the site of the former volcanic eruptions.
After crossing the main gate, one may only leave their vehicles upon arriving at the parking lot following a short drive. This is to change from the car to one of the lined up buses and to visit, on return, the restaurant. The ride on the coaches takes 35-40 minutes and follows a wiggling, one-way route through the landscape. Constrained to their seats or near the aisle, passengers are taking photographs of the scenery through the reflective windows never smelling, touching, or seeing anything in its totality, their time dictated by schedule. The surreal, theme-park and/or simulation like experience, is the extreme manifestation of mass-tourism’s unengaged spectatorship and alienation, where the attempt at connection happens through a double-screen, the screen of the bus and the camera(mobile), in quick impulses of consuming and memorialising the spectacle.
The narrative-like documentation of the bus ride, arranged in a long line, emphasises the forward movement through space, the unfolding of a never fully unfolding territory. The inaccessibility of the place is further amplified by the inserted images of local maps. An even more extreme abstraction and rendering of a space onto a flat surface, they are created for the consumption and navigation of otherwise incomprehensible territories- just as the ride was also intended to do so. The name of the work, ‘Dog Days’, draws on the original meaning(s) of the expression, referencing a period of the most intense heat of the year as well as a generic sense of inactivity and decline, a sort of demoralization. Through these connotations, it brings into the imagination the fire-moulded landscape, the scorching heat of the lava, the period of the volcanic eruption - the fantasy of a spectacle also amplified through dramatic music and trilingual narration during the route. At the same time, it is also a reference to the passivity of the mass-touristic enterprise, to the decline of our capacity for being present and critically reflect on our status as spectators and consumers existing in the liminal space between representation and reality.