Abstract

On Display examines and agitates the roles travel-based media has played in the flattening of Asia-Pacific environments. This aspires to better understand the expectations and performances landscapes and their agents are to consistently perform for the tourist. Grounded by the creation of tourism infrastructure in the aftermath of colonial resource extraction and reorganisation, the lecture focuses on the throughline of Post-War travel media to the contemporary social media landscape as a means of inquiry where notions of tropicality, paradise, and abundance are explored in their power dynamics against competing threads of fetishisation, exploitation, and facsimile. Case studies in Fiji, Hawaiʻi, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam showcase a visual reconfiguration and lively commodification of the cultural landscape, contributing greater visual literacy around the power images have in flattening the constructed and cultural landscapes. In doing so, the practice of tourism is unsettled, highlighting the continued colonial practices embedded in an ever-growing industry amidst destabilised climate and socio-cultural dynamics.

About the Speaker

Dr. William Shivers is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. His work approaches culturally and ecologically significant plant species as a means to agitate standardised narratives, constructs, and practices of the constructed environment. His interests lie in cultural landscapes, the environmental humanities, political ecology, and lively commodification. William completed his Ph.D. in the Constructed Environment at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture under landscape historian Michael G. Lee. His dissertation produced a unique biography of landscape through an exploration of the creation, expansion, and maintenance of the American periphery. Centred around ‘Ohi’a Lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha) in Hawai’i this work created a novel approach to landscape history and analysis through design research methods.