The Desire to Travel: Being a Tourist in the Twenty-First Century

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Image courtesy of CCCB.

Writer Geoff Dyer speaks with the journalist and writer Laura Fernández about the sense of travel and yearning to see new places at a time when tourism has become a global phenomenon.

Tourism is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of contemporary life, with a powerful symbolic universe that not only activates society’s deep-rooted codes, beliefs and desires but also constitutes an economic sector with a huge impact on the global scale. The English writer Geoff Dyer has pondered these matters in books including Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (in Spanish, Amor en Venecia, muerte en Benarés, Literatura Random House, 2010) and White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World (Arenas blancas, Literatura Random House, 2017), in which he examines the experience of today’s traveler who is often trapped in the paradox of aspiring to a unique, authentic experience while also being aware that the trip is part of a carefully staged happening. In this session, Geoff Dyer speaks with the writer and journalist Laura Férnandez who has recently published Hay un monstruo en el lago (There’s a Monster in the Lake, En Debate, 2024), in which she reflects on the construction of the tourist tale arising from the myth of the Loch Ness monster. They will discuss possible answers to important questions of our times. What does it mean to travel? Why do we visit the places we go to? What lies behind this experience which we find so deeply appealing?

With this session, the CCCB initiates a program that explores one of the most characteristic phenomena of present-day existence, one that has profound impacts in the economic, social and environmental domains, while also presenting major challenges that affect life in the city.

Event will be held in English and Catalan with simultaneous translation from English to Catalan.

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