Welcome to the TED playful, experiential sound walk in the Tourist City. The TED story begins right here where you are, but it could have happened in many other places in the city and in any town that became more hostile and less welcoming. Potentially, you can listen to this piece wherever you are, yet it was designed and situated in the context of Florence.
You can hear a story, made up of many voices, the story of an ancient Renaissance city that was transformed into a tourist theme park and became the quintessential tourist city. You will hear from Wario Nazdella, the caricatured entity of the tourist mayor, and the polyphonic and metamorphic voice of Ted The Mole, a nonconformist imaginary contrivance born of a performative mistake that moves in the opposite direction of the norm, a contrivance a narrative move, a multimodal connector, an urban hybrid… and more. See the four people standing motionless in the center of the square? They are part of the sound walk experience, representing different aspects of the city’s transformation. Through their stillness and presence, these individuals symbolize the frozen state of the city’s culture and history amidst the rapid changes brought about by mass tourism. Before you scan the QRCode and begin listening, let the TED Mask guide you through a ritual that will lead you into an underground experience, at times blind, playful, and fun.
How: Take a walk
Take a sound walk of urban critique accompanied by Ted The Mole, a pseudonym of a multiple entity in perpetual becoming, composed of urban researchers, artists, makers, and activists. A project started in 2018 that intends to show the absurdity of mass tourism and investigate the impact of touristification on our lives. The piece was originally produced in English, and to situate it in context, it was translated and reworked in Italian through a collective and self-organized effort of months. The script and dramaturgy of the piece found their conceptual framework in the concept of “Sceneturgia,” a neologism that melds together the words Script and Dramaturgy to express the peculiarity of a hybrid work that is both prescriptive and open to interpretations calling for actions, observations while strolling and detouring the city.
Human and Non-human storytelling subjectivities invite you to get lost in the city’s historic center, locate security cameras, and pin observations and unexpected encounters on your map. We then meet again in Ted’s ‘temporary temple,’ a place of belief you might find for yourself at the end of this walk and from which you can write and tell us how your experience went.
Where is the place where most tourism occurs in this city? What makes a city safe, and why do we need more safety? What kind of city do we desire? Between disorientation and drift, narrative voices will take you on a sound and sensory journey to experiment with new codes for reading and interacting with the touristic urban landscape.
Steps you might follow:
– Print the ticket to enter the theme park and the map you find attached with all necessary instructions.
– Bring your smartphone and headphones and sit in a square close to a tourist center.
– Bring a candle, a color strip, or any object you find to trace your passage and pin your arrival point.
– Scan the QRCode and begin listening. The voices you hear will guide and ask you to do some tasks as you drift.
– Once you have arrived at the end of the piece and responded to all the questions you hear and find on the map, sit again and trace your passage with you strip, candle or the object you brought with you.
– If you want, send us a picture of the place you found and a map scan, including your path and answers.
Who
Ted is a narrative voice that connects different historical spaces and times. Ted the Mole is a maverick, often moving in a direction opposite to the norm. Ted is the result of a mistake; she is a viral representation—a polyphonic collection of story fragments, collective reflections, atmospheres, and new spatial references.
Write to [email protected]
The piece was realized and presented within the Urban Cultural format URBANSCAPES 2023, hosted by Street Levels Gallery and A Testa Alta E.T.S. in Florence.
Ted in the touristic city - ITA |
Credits
A project curated by Ted La Talpa, a multiple entity in perpetual becoming composed on this occasion by Jessica Mazzotti, Marco Di Domenico, LaBotta, Enrico Tommasini. With the support of Ex Voto, Martina Rotella artist and set designer, Niccolò Vannucchi Sound Artist, Asia Neri for Street Art Gallery, Rame13, ext_strtgy.
URBANSCAPES is a device for investigating the transformations affecting public space. Through the practices of reappropriation and re-signification pursued by those who inhabit the urban fabric, the review intends to invite us to rethink our posture and relationship with the body of the city by delving into the experience of collectives, movements, third sector entities, projects, and artists who promote alternative codes of interaction to predetermined ones. Can participation in the life of the city free itself from the binding superstructures of consumption and decorum? What other relationships are possible with public space? With the second editions of URBANSCAPES, Street Levels Gallery and A Testa Alta E.T.S. intend to continue this conversation by combining the talk tool with performances, audio walks, urban treks, sit-ins and participatory experiences to propose unpredictable encounters with the city ecosystem.
Ted The Mole
Ted is the result of an error, a literal and compositional error. Ted is the resultant, the leftover, the excluded from the central discourse. Ted is there at the edge of the tombstone inaugurating a performative funeral procession dedicated to the Square. Ted - In the Tourist City is the first chapter of Ted's story. Ted is an outsider or better said an alienating and imaginary character. Ted is a narrative connector of places, people and urban phenomena. Ted ideally traces the tradition of the multiple name by problematizing the authorial dimension of knowledge. In a field of narrative speculation Ted becomes a fossilized urban trace presaging to another possible future.
Bibliography
Andy Warhol,The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), 1977
David Harvey, The Right to the City, Web, 2008
Jala Erzen,The City as a Social Sculpture, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, 2014
Mick Wilson and Tom Holert, 2010, ‘Latent Essentialism: An E-mail exchange on Art, Research and
Education’, Curating and Educational Turn, London, Open Editions
Rodolphe Christin, Mass Tourism and World Exploitation // Mass Tourism and World Exploitation,
Milan, Eleuthera (2019)
Wolf Bukowsky, The good education of the oppressed - Little History of Decorum// The good education of
the oppressed - A short history of decorum, Bologna, Alegre Edition (2019)
Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus a brief history of tomorrow, London, Harvill Secker (2016)
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Einaudi Editori, Translated