Handbook for Rapid Travelers - "Avatar"

There is a danger in travelling to a new place and feeling compelled to create closure for that experience. The process may begin in small ways, like finding specific connections between events, people, and the words they speak, but before long you are generalizing and supporting these generalizations with an ill-mixture of informed and uninformed thinking. You may even appropriate small aspects of the place by collecting souvenirs to be shown to others. In my recent visit to Stockholm, I did not fail to do this, however, my tourism found affinity in the exhibition "Avatar". Individually, this process may round out one's interpretation into a more cogent and recognizable reality, at least for oneself. However, with "Avatar", this process is engaged at the level of an institution - here, the travel is more treacherous, the tourism is less benign and the appropriation is very real.

"Avatar's" inaugural installation was at the Moderna Museet (www.modernamuseet.se) and coincided with the reopening of the museum in its new building by the architect Ralph Meneo and the opening of the blockbuster "Miro" exhibition. "Avatar" was curated by Ulrika Sten of Riksutst