Club Paradise: vacation culture, consciousness and capitalism. The selling of ’time off.’ Marketed vacation migration is compared to early nomadic tribes led by their shaman on the tracks of game. Only now the the game pursued is a state of mind to produce a worker’s consciousness tolerant of capitalist slavery.
The projects of Club Paradise examine the selling of nostalgia, the marketing of adventure absent in worker's controlled lives, colonization of vacation areas, worker migration, and the use of memory and consciousness to control workers’ minds. A nomadic shamanic consciousness is proposed, to create paradise at home, a mindfulness of the interconnectedness of all beings, to hold the idea of anima mundi as our relationship to the world and deep awareness of our connection to nature.
Multi-media, 7 films, works on paper, essay, print, photography.
Race the Sun Meditation. Jeff Crouch Music.
Moon on Fire Meditation. Super Blood Wolf Moon eclipse January 2019. Jeff Crouch music.
Welcome. The Cape island trader narrating the video discusses the seasonal economy of his island. He describes the effects of imported workers to service vacationers on the environment and community, and housing problems (with his personal solution), and the politics in his personal life. Trip Barnes. Photography, video, Martha's Vineyard.
Tears in the Night. Club Paradise is always here, waiting for you....advertisement for Club Paradise. Jeff Crouch music.
Last Exit. Poetry dialogue mixed with screen grabs from the bleak, noir, 1945 Club Paradise released the same year the US bombed Hiroshima. Last Exit becomes a romantic vacation advertisement that comments on perception, storytelling and propaganda. Jeff Crouch music.
Club Paradise. An advertisement for a fictional resort suggests memory and nostalgia are used by corporate interests to produce a workers' consciousness tolerant of capitalist slavery. Blaine Reininger music, Fly Me To The Moon. Destany Foley.
Blue Souvenir, Mandala. Series of 6. Cyanotype, a 'blueprint.' The vacation industry has a blueprint for your consciousness, to attain relaxation, alter your consciousness, a sign of a successful vacation. On vacation you produce memories to consume later. A souvenir is a memory aide, to remind you of those experiences. Nostalgia is embedded in vacation. When you enjoy a memory, you want to produc
Decorating Bone Tree or Shell Tree was a delightful experience for many tourists and vacationers for years. Until a new house builder cut it down in the night, because it blocked his view.
Club Paradise. Slide show, graphic essay. Found images. Digital collage. Series of 14 pages.
Death, drugs, drunkeness, disaster… polaroids reimagine notorious vacations in literature, news and film, photographed on Lake Wequaquet, Cape Cod. Series of 12 photographs in vinyl bound book. $600.
Sent is a 6 postcard experimental mail art project with Jeff Crouch in Texas. The postcard messages are a secret story without beginning or end. Is a card lost in the mail? Who is writing to whom? What are the motives of writer and recipient? The writing on the back of the cards suggest a narrative different from the usual holiday tourist seeking memories to consume later. Influenced by Derrida’s Postcard, the cards are a secret that serves a purpose we can never know.
© 2023 CECELIA CHAPMAN