Intentos de escapada / Escape Attempts

A.- It was in a way, although it was certainly more civilised than Walden . I had the money to build my house, but not to get electricity! They call it "off the grid"... When you live in the city you don't even know what the "grid" is. For a while I plugged my house into my car! There was a cord that came out of the house and into the boot of the car! The problem was I had to drive the car everyday to charge up the battery. One day somebody said, "You've always been off the grid !" Meaning that I have always been outside the system. I do have electricity now, but it's solar electricity.

Q.- Based at your new home, you have considered aspects that are closer to the landscape, environment, tourism, architecture, geography, anthropology, the culture of native American Indians...

A.- For ten years I have been writing a book about the place where I live. It has nothing to do with the art world. Now I'm more into the field of architecture, the use of land. I have branched out into new areas. I don't miss being "on the grid." I haven't separated from the art world completely, though. My friends are artists, I still see art and I still have to make a living.

Q.- In your latest book, On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place (1999), you explore these concerns about space and culture, and you refer to the "cannibalism" that appears both in art and tourism. What do you think of art as a major tourist attraction?

A.- It's about consumption. Tourism is just a voracious appetite for everything outside our own experience. Western society wants to swallow everything up. As regards cultural tourism, it is not only about visiting large exhibitions at museums, that can be considered an imposition, the taste of a very powerful class that has decided that is great art (the work of dead artists!). Cultural tourism is also about palaces and spectacular locations. We get a very distorted vision of the places we visit... And we swallow it all up.