Are you tired of the traditional tourist experience? Would you like to explore the city from a new point of view? Being a part of Pula is an embodied touristic experience that shares the city from the eyes* of local artists. Local artists joined forces with the high school students of Gymnasium Pula, and created a route which will allow you to experience Pula through their and your own senses.
Where traditional walking tours tell the history of Pula, our tour brings you into the present moment to offer a rich, memorable and playful experience.
As we move through the city, our artists invite you into a sensation: to feel the ancient walls of the Temple of Augustus; to listen to the echoes of the Arch of the Sergii; to draw the lines of the Amphitheater; to experience the city from a height or by climbing its walls.
Being a part of Pula is about your relationship with the city of Pula. We want to reveal that the quality of attention you bring to the world changes the quality of the world that comes to your attention.
About the project
The community art project Being A-Part of Pula looks at how our relationships can be directly experienced and explored, through games and tasks. We are sharing the type of art that you do yourself and have your own completely individual experience from.
Our process has been establishing specific relationships to explore, and developing tasks around these, with the help of non-professionals from the community. We developed our work into accessible site specific “invitations” around Kaštel and call this process embodied tourism.
We envision to create a route around the city which will take you into the parts of the city which is visited by the community, seen from the perspective of the local community, and share stories of the locals living in Pula. The information which you see when you scan the QR code will show a task- such as walking up the stairs with eyes closed, alongside a reflective question about the experience.
We developed these tasks with the help of the students from the Gymnasium in Pula – they have developed the artwork for the project, came up with exercises and did the filming. We prefer this approach because the imperfections may share a feeling of accessibility and familiarity, and avoid a feeling of comparison.
In the spirit of community art, we wanted the participants to be the driving force of the final product and the professionals only the wind in their sails and a compass in their hands.
We see the project bringing value for both local and tourist populations. Locals are exposed to the same sights every day, and for some, this can lead one to feel they are in a situation that they cannot change. The embodied tourism elements may share the possibility of making new memories and experiences, revealing a hidden dynamism in the familiar environment. We think that these are powerful and important things that should be publicly available, due to their positive associations with mental health and the sense of agency.
For the tourists, their travels are often inspired by a sense of adventure, yet their experiences are not always completely personal. We wish to share something private that cannot be described in a selfie or an Instagram story, but an experience that offers a feeling of enchantment with the city of Pula, that they may take back home with them.
We, as part of the local community of Pula, would like to make sure that Pula remains loved and enjoyed for what made the citizens stay here or return to it. We want to make sure that those who visit can experience its beauty while simultaneously being able to take an active part in making long lasting memories.