This is U/Model Citizen
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Summer 2019
For this project Matthew and I decided to bring attention to the perception of Amsterdam that is immersed on individuals within the short period of time that they are visiting, while exploring the idea of everyone having their own perception of Amsterdam; with the premade perception being the same for stereotypical tourist. In our exploration through different cities and our project’s locations, we noticed that there are different types of tourist. Two main types that contrast each other are people like ourselves, who stay for extended periods to learn the deeper historical aspects of a city, and then the “cruise tourist” who take the prepared presentations provided by the city as the only information they’ll need . For these cruise tourists, making plans to visit a place, such as Amsterdam, comes with high expectations that “consequential impact…their overall satisfaction regarding the destination”. These prepared presentations consist of guided tours, boats tours, and thirty minute museum visits that merely highlight the golden age of Amsterdam.
The first part of our project named, “This is U’ is a collection of images, taken and edited by myself and modeled by Matthew, which took place the day of our experiment in Dam Square. The use of double exposures and reflective material from the foil Matthew was wrapped in, and his 3M Golf le Fleurs, helped us to capture what the crazed activity of a tourist hotspot looks like to us both. “This is U” is an experimental observation of the people in the area without them knowing that they’re subjects of our investigation. Our intention was to capture the reactions of the people to determine whether, or not, they would stop and take pictures, or stop and ask questions. If they were to stop and take pictures with no questions asked they fell under the category of the weekend tourist. On the other hand, if they were to stop and ask questions they would be considered people in the category of our entire class group; who actually show some sort of interest in what they are witnessing. On the day of the experiment the weather hit a high of 97 degrees, soaking Matthew in sweat after removing the foil preventing us from staying more than an hour. We selected Dam Square as our location for the day, as it is one of the main hotspots of Dutch tourism.
The second half of our project, titled “Model Citizen’, is a sculpture model of the weekend tourist that the people of Amsterdam want the most. This is an impolite design that imposes a mockery of the typical tourist that Amsterdam is shaped around. Using a pyramid that includes locals, marketers and Dutch government, and tourist themselves we created the sculpture to illustrate every aspect from each corner of the pyramid. For marketers, this model is a representation of a money muse that continues to bring is cash well after their departure from the city. As for locals, the model is a broad image of what these tourist loom like being fatter, distinct in fashion choices, and loud. Lastly, the model explicitly represents “us” as tourist and what we do for both the locals and government of the Netherlands. We used the foil to illustrate that tourist become temporarily immersed in the prepared image provided by the Dutch from these tours and visits. This immersion marks these tourist as spokespersons for Amsterdam to reflect the good aspects from the short time in the place onto the world and their friends. On the model, it can be seen that the back is exposed at the shoulders to show that, similar to the photos, the immersion is temporary and will ultimately be forgotten, or reduced to, “I’ve been there before”. Other design aspects include the large belly that locals link to tourist and the red X’s marked on the skin of foil that can be seen around all of the Netherlands. In the missing head portion of the manikin we decided to plant sunflowers to represent the beauty in Amsterdam that we found in some of our favorite places.
In collaboration with Matthew Kelley
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