Curio(us) Translocations: Site-Specific Interventions in Banglatown, London

Culture and tourism are destined once and for all to be together.1All over world now we find these 'attractions' - of little significance for inward of a people, but wonderfully saleable as a tourist commodity.2THIS ESSAY SETS OUT TO INVESTIGATE a particular mode of encounter with difference that is performed in a specific site of postcolonial translocation - tourist zone. In cities with large immigrant or minority populations, enclaves that have come to be known as Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Vietnam, and Banglatown allegedly offer tourists a taste of 'authentic' (from culinary delights to practices), yet at same time they are clearly inauthentic, 'disneyfied', 'exotic' re-inventions that are often result of urban regeneration and cultural-planning policies. I explore how popularity of tourist zones illustrates fact that difference sells - that it can effectively be packaged, sold, consumed - and thus functions as a commodity. This raises questions with regard to relationships between tourists as consumers and local communities as producers of experiences. Also examined are some of negative outcomes of this process of commodification, such as stereotyping, imposition of homogeneity, and erasure of diversity and internal differences in migrant communities. The elision of ethnic, religious, linguistic, gender, and class disparities in 'multicultural' urban districts and reductive stereotyping and labelling of all migrants as 'them', however, ironically reifies notion of difference and reinforces categories of 'us' and 'them'. In order to explore nature of tourist zone as a site of postcolonial translocation and to examine in greater detail efficacy of art's potential intervention in workings of tourism, I shall be looking at Curio, an exhibition that attempted to disrupt tourist zone of Banglatown in London's East End in 2002. It might be useful, however, to begin with a conceptual and contextual outline of development of tourism.Within scope of this essay, term 'culture' will be understood to refer primarily to the distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviour, products, or way of life of a community, and not and intellectual development3 of an individual.4 More pertinently, term 'cultural tourism' will be used to denote following:the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to exercise of an activity remunerated from within place visited.5In order to explore dynamics of specific cultural-tourism model as proposed by Eduard Delgado - one based on the concepts of diversity (culture and creativity), interaction (trust) and context (distinction)6 and where community-engaged approaches work in partnership with artistic and initiatives organized by urban-planning and development councils - 'culture' will also be regarded as an interactive and collaborative process and not merely as an entity that can accrue to individuals, unlike Pierre Bourdieu's notion of acquiring cultural capital.7Moving away from conceptual definitions of 'cultural tourism' and on to its contextual framework, a seminal phase of development occurred during expansion of middle class in second half of nineteenth century.8 This led to opening up of 'high' culture to a larger audience, and was one of preconditions for first boom in tourism industry in aftermath of Second Industrial Revolution. Unlike situation obtaining in days of Grand Tour, consumption was no longer an elitist pursuit limited to upper classes or aristocracy, as success of tour operator Thomas Cook (the first to offer predominantly middle-class travellers package tours to European destinations with a 'cultural slant' since 1860s) illustrated. …