[Best of ICAM 2020] Francis Galang -  Localizing the Visitor
Channel: UC San Diego Music
Date: 2020-06-11

Francis Galang -  Localizing the Visitor
This is a video that proposes a project I would like to pursue in the future after the pandemic. I wish to produce a three-walled projection installation about Californianess as told through travel brochures. In this installation, guests may scan travel brochures from each of the counties in California which will cause the projection to display a duplicate of each travel brochure, with the text and images replaced by interviews and photography from local residents. The content filling these travel brochures is selected through this activity called "participatory mapmaking", where I interview residents of each locale and ask them to highlight locations that are important in their community for a resident.

The projection serves to produce a "local" travel brochure, which visitors of the installation may view and contrast against the physical travel brochures they had scanned. This project aims to problematize travel brochures as objects distant from the biographies and histories of residents living in locales. The selection of brochures also calls into question in what ways the lived experience of residents in locales sum to produce the idea of what 'California' is as a whole. This project follows a series of visits to all counties across California starting in 2018.

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