project title
Reimagineering
project description
Jean Baudrillard called Disney "the precursor, the grand initiator of the imaginary as virtual reality... in the process of capturing all the real world to integrate it into its synthetic universe."
It occured to me that maps of amusement parks and theme parks had the same basic feel as those wall maps posted in shopping centers, inapplicable to any other situation and basically useless except as a means of quick orientation. Maps of real places invite exploration; maps of nonplaces are entirely directed, leaving no space open for dialogue.
This collaborative project features an original 1958 map of the Disneyland park in Anaheim, CA. The map will be left up until the end of the Conflux; over the course of the weekend, participants are invited to cut up, alter, reconfigure, rearrange, subvert, and generally detourne the map, using provided materials (or not), interacting with and building on each other's work and ideas, trying to see if anything can be done to turn this map of a non-place into that of a real place.
At the end of the Conflux the map will be removed and, in whatever state it's in, copied and reprinted. The new, improved maps will then be droplifted within the Disney World Resort and surrounding hotels in Orlando, Florida and in the Disney Store in Times Square by secret operatives.
A blog will be set up to follow the project and see where it goes.
name
Holly Tavel
location
Brooklyn, New York
profile
Holly Tavel is a writer and artist originally from Florida and currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Her projects have encompassed a wide variety of media, from film and text to public space interventions. She is interested in the ways that art and social activism can interact. Other interests include vintage A/V equipment, hot air balloons, and invisibility. For several years she played keyboards and designed props for experimental music/performance act Obliterati (not to be confused with that other musical act Obliterati). She is single and looking.
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