Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Placed in a ‘world of increased communication, travel and migration’, the artist becomes ‘homo viator’, one crossing through signs and formats to relate to the contemporary traits of mobility in society. A traveling artist in an unfamiliar environment, instead of collecting postcard views, has a more specific focus, seeking to represent an engagement in the decentralization of the self. As a photographer, one can explore the disturbance of the habitual placement of personality by being enveloped by the unfamiliar as a means of expression. This can be linked to the experience of the place itself and the mythologies that are connected to its history. This paper will show, through discussion of images, a search through encounters of winds and seas in different places, to find social and personal affinities with the environments represented. Using abstract landscape photography, a visual translation of what can be described as the ‘quality of being ‘honey-eyed’ becomes the discovery of being embroiled in an external experience. This is a view opposed to the touristic brushing against the surface, questioning the ways the world is to be experienced through the liminal spaces of the travel encounter, seeking where the body is lingering between the unfamiliar and the habitual, getting deeply involved in the space itself. The narrative derives from readings and commentaries on art, as well as on travel and perception, searching for solid links between travel and visual representation of mythology through contemporary art and theory.