“Cavo D’oro is the place where the sun never sets, where life is easy, and everything is sweet like a strawberry juice”.
I remember when I was young, watching on television videos from Malia or Kavos, where tourists were beating each other, running naked, and passing by cheap alcohol. It was like a parallel universe. Comparing it with the typical village on an Island, where the local population would go, those places seemed like luna parks for North European kids, who wanted to live their European spring break experience.
I wanted to see what’s left over from all of this.
Greece's biggest industry is that of tourism (around 20% of its GDP), an industry that has hugely expanded over the last 20 years. This big capital expansion has transformed most of the Natural landscapes into construction sites and has brought easy profit for fly-by-night companies. Also, it has helped the acceleration of late capitalism and the creation of a simulation of experiences. Especially in places like Malia or Kavos, where nowadays it's like you are entering a small town, only built for tourist purposes, it is difficult to discrete what is real and what is fake.
I wanted to see what’s left over from all of this when the tourist season is over.
Cavo D’oro is a visual investigation of a false promised land — a wasteland. It explores how capitalism and the pursuit of profit can transform natural paradises into 'Mad Max'-like dystopias. The project examines the paradoxical nature of space itself and how, under late capitalist tourism, even the landscape becomes alienated through a homogenization of experiences and memories.
