holy ghosts is a (web)site-specific and mainly text-based project, in which I will create a narrative and performative map of my current place of residence - Jerusalem. Throughout the month I will work with paid ghostwriters from all over the globe and all kinds of genres, to reserach hyperreal narratives in the age of the Internet as well as the availability and uniqueness of experiences in a globalized world.  
 
To see how the imagined will collide with local reality, I will serve as their messenger and mark the spots of their/my traces on the map, their words accompanied or opposed by my visual reaction and input. In the end, multiple layers of my-selves will have been spread all over the city and create their own pattern and chain of events.*  
 
Screenshot of the map* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
*the interactive map is no longer available 
The holy ghosts archive 
 
Dear visitor,  
 
during my residency I was working with an interactive online map which let you accompany the "ghosts" (versions of a fictional tourist, invented by ghostwriters from all over the world) on their journey through Jerusalem. 
 
Since the map itself is unfortunately no longer available, I have archived all the content online for you to revisit.  
Each ghost's name is now a link to an external folder where you will find the respective ghost's story and additional visual or audio content that I created as a reaction to it.  
travel agency logo 
nonwestern sci-fi 
character backstory 
theater script 
immersive travel writing 
Haiku in English and Japanese 
+++NOTES+++RESEARCH BACKGROUND+++DOCUMENTATION+++READING LISTS+++LINKS LINKS LINKS+++NOTES+++RESEARCH BACKGROUND+++ 
 
++READING RECOMMENDATION+++ 
Digital Essay by JR Carpenter 
 
"My early adoption of the internet as a medium was due in part to my attraction to the web as an inbetween space wherein the dialectics of desire and loss, image and text, map and trace, place and space could finally co-exist. Thus far I've used the term 'map' loosely. All maps are born of specific times and places, of systems of thought and of measurement, of policies of trade and of governance."  
15/06/20 
Made a new friend today after visiting Hebron Khan Hostel IRL. Tutu from Harab Faj Cafe (which is located directly in front of the hostel) said a thing or two about his city, one of which I will share here: 
 
"When you talk about Jerusalem, it's always STORIES, STORIES, STORIES.  
You can never stop." 
+++SOMETHING TO WATCH++ 
 
The Simpsons episode "The Greates Story Ever D'ohed" (S21 E16), where they go to the Holy City, which in light of this research seemed amazingly connected and offers a lot of fun ideas about tourists' images of places/places' images of tourists. Made a little GIF from that, full episode can be found somewhere in cyberspace, I'm sure. 
+++SOMETHING ELSE TO WATCH+++ 
 
An interesting phenoma that emerged in the last years, especially among youtube and instagram influencers, is the so-called "fake trips"/"lying challenges". They pretend to be traveling to a place abroad and "document" the entire journeys on their channels - including stories, pictures and videos taken on airports and sights, as well as marking the locations, of course.  
I watched this really, really in the beginning of this research, even before the actual residency started. While it's not exactly big news that, when it comes to the web, you can basically be whatever and wherever you want - but especially under the lense of tourism and hyperreality I still felt like it's worth sharing this, as some kind of fringe part of the subject.  
 
But see for yourself in this example: 
13/06/20 
missions sent out to all the ghosts 
22/06/20 
 
Taking a moment to reflect on what it means to do a project/research like this, on the (hyper)realities of tourism and travel writing create, in times like these.  
 
When borders are more present than ever, cities stay empty, private and public futures are uncertain and the realities we thought to live in are mercilessly crumbling down. It does feel like a quite nostalgic act, catching the leftovers of what once has been a lot of people's daily bread and life, archives of places' potentials and flaws - and not sure if that might be a good thing or actually just a one way street.  
 
What is nostalgia anyway if not as well an attempt of enforcing yet another layer of hyperreality on top of what we call "real"?  
As Baudrillard puts it: a strategy of the real.  
 
"When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning." (as fully quoted below) 
At last, a quote about Jerusalem: 
 
"But in Jerusalem all historic times are out of time, or they are contemporary, or there is only one ultimate time in which God sends His Son to the Passion and exposes prophets to constant trials. (...) The holiest shrines of three religions are clustered round each other within a circle one mile in diameter, as if God could not find another place on earth but the Old City in Jerusalem. It is only due to the successive profanations and consecrations of the same places that archeologists can with such certainty establish the topography of events two thousand years ago. The holy places in Jerusalem are built of the same bright stone. If Jerusalem is a particular place of Divine mediation, it is only the stones that are its witness. (...) In Jerusalem, over the biblical Hill of Evil Counsel the light at sunset is red, the rays are split and centre, like a halo, round an unseen head.
 
From: Jan Kott, The Eating of the Gods (Introduction), 1987 
 
 
*30/06/2020 
A last note on the project and things 
 
holy ghosts (as for now) did not turn out what I imagined it to be in the beginning of the year. Sure, tourists and their way of performing places are still the main element things circled around - but what happened is that the current events left an imprint on every thought, word, image and sound that I had, created, or came across in this time. It was a way to micro-archive these very exceptional times, full of uncertainty and anger but also of hope and clarity of thoughts, realizing things that were blurred before. To make a work about tourism and tourist narratives means inevitably to make a work about 20/21st century capitalism and its narratives. Trying to deconstruct "travelers' realities" means you have to start deconstructing the system's realities - and oh, the gates that this opens up. I am not done with this, of course. However, I surely did take a lot from going through this month and doing the work I did, and I hope that maybe you did or will do, too. 
 
 
Below you find a reading lists of texts and books I always got back to and got inspired by during this project. 
 
 
Jean Baudrillard:  
Simulacra and Simulation, 1983 
--> and many, many other books and texts that he wrote. This is the one that introduced me to the concept of Hyperreality. 
 
Walter Benjamin: 
Arcades, 1982 
--> this was published in the 80ies but written much earlier and contains some really early thoughts on "Psychogeography" 
 
Roland Barthes:  
--> the link will lead you to a pdf-file containing the entire book (however it is much more fun to read the actual, printed book)  
 
Jorge Louis Borges:  
 
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson):  
The Hunting of the Snark, 1847 
--> look up "The Bellman's Map", I quoted it as well in the Horror-Map-Making-GIF 
 
Lewis Carroll:  
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, 1889 
--> also quoted in that GIF, seems like Carrol was busy as well with the impossibility of creating an accurate map of "real" places 
 
Guy Debord:  
--> published on the Bureau of Public Secrets, which is a great platform offering copyright-free, entire texts of Debord and others in a huge variety of translations 
 
Umberto Eco:  
--> another case of "better get the book" - but it certainly is worth checking this file just for having a first glance inside Eco's world of Hyperreality  
Patrick Holland, Graham Huggan (Edit.): 
Tourists with Typewriters - Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing, 2000 
 
John Urry:  
The Tourist Gaze (2nd Edit), 2002 
--> certainly a classic in the field of "tourist science", he was the first one to write about the "Tourist Gaze" and developped his theory further in many, many editions of this book. Quoted by literally everyone writing about this subject. 
 
Graham M.S. Dann (Edit.):  
The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World, 2002 
 
Metin Kozak, Nazmi Kozak (Edit.):  
Tourism Behavior - An Experiential Practice, 2018 
--> the authors come from the tourism industry itself, it still is quite interesting though to get an insight on the act of "performing cultural tourism" etc. 
 
Henrik Linden, Sara Linden (Edit.):  
Fans and Fan Cultures - Tourism, Consumerism and Social Media, 2017 
--> not only very fun to read, also one of the most contemporary texts I could find on the subject and opening perspectives not only on tourism but fan and pop cultures etc as well 
 
Cornel Sandvoss: 
I love IBIZA: Music, Place and Belonging  
(in: Mark Duffett: Popular Music Fandom: Identities, Roles and Practices, 2014) 
--> still hoping to get to read the full essay, as it was quoted a lot by Linden&Linden (see above) and is written in a very fun and accessible way 
 
Nick Perry:  
Hyperreality and Global Culture, 1998 
 
 
 
 
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Antje Cordes (GER) is an interdisciplinary artist, performance director, and dramaturg, currently based in Jerusalem. 
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