Ninth International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

This project reinterprets an historic tourist landscape using non-traditional methods to ‘unsee’ the site and deconstruct the colonial narrative. The Mount Locust Inn, Mississippi, is the only remaining inn along the contemporary Natchez Trace Parkway National Park. Interpretive elements of this site present an overwhelmingly narrow view of white, colonial experiences in this region. Although the site served many populations, including Native Americans, women, and slaves, the primary narrative is focused on white men who traversed this landscape, perpetuating a romanticized and racist worldview that justifies the dominant, colonial narrative. Borrowing from the tenets of non-representational theory, I represent this place outside of measured drawings or postcard images. The methodology includes etching, observation, site sketching, and photographic documentation of abstract site features, including texture, color, surfaces, and materiality. My methods result in a collection of abstract pieces that the viewer must put together using their perspectives, allowing us all to see the site through our own frame of reference rather than a predetermined lens, pushing back against typical tourist experiences of the site. Eliminating recognizable landscape cues, for example this colonial era structure, the viewer experiences the site anew, deconstructing built forms and removing socio-cultural associations toward specific phenomena. While the site itself remains a relic of colonial landscape interpretation, this project revises the narrative to evoke new emotions and shift the viewer’s understanding of the Mount Locust Inn; the viewer now constructs this landscape through their own individual understanding for a less subjective and personal experience of the site.