Club Paradise: vacation culture, consciousness and capitalism. The projects of Club Paradise examine the marketing of ‘time off.’ The vacation migration that swells popular vacation sites is compared to early nomadic tribes led by their shaman on the tracks of game. Only now the game pursued is a state of mind sold by corporate interests to produce a workers’ consciousness tolerant of capitalist slavery.
The selling of adventure absent in workers regulated lives, the colonisation of vacation areas, worker migration, and the use of nostalgia and memory to control workers’ minds are examined. A nomadic shamanic consciousness is proposed, anima mundi, connection to nature, mindfulness of the interconnectedness of all.
Multi-media, 7 films, works on paper, essay, print, photography. Filmed on Cape Cod.
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. $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