The Beach Machine
kyklàda.press talk and book launch with George Papam and David Bergé
In this talk, editor George Papam will discuss two recent books in the series, which he co-edited: The Beach Machine and Islands After Tourism.
Beachfronts are assembled as intensely ordered infrastructures for the heavy machineries of tourism. Approaching the beach as an operational socio-technical landscape, George Papam suggests to frame a beach as a machine, a place with protocols of function and metabolic needs, and asks how it directs the capture of land and bodies while establishing forms of environmental control.
Today, it feels uncanny to picture islands and their coasts freed from programs of leisure. But in recent years, the exhaustion of people and landscapes has brought forth a renewed imperative to think outside this ubiquitous extractive industry. In this talk, George Papam will discuss the difficulty, urgency, and necessity of disrupting the monocultural imaginations of tourism and idyllic beaches. To escape the devouring vortex of tourism's sticky nature and messianic promises, the cultural and political work necessary is not only negation and resistance, but also bold re-conceptualizations and re-imaginings.
kyklàda.press is a series of compact books made in Athens about the Aegean archipelago. Touching subjects spanning from human geography, constructed landscapes, extractivism, urbanism, to healing, and expressions of desire and grief, affection and pain, the press currently has 10 titles in its catalogue. Five to six contributors from different practices craft each book together, relaying knowledge derived from lived experiences on islands.
George Papam is a geographer and editor. He studies infrastructures, contemporary mobilities beyond tourism, forms of actually-existing geoengineering, and the urbanization of the countryside. His current project looks at the overlaps between the hospitality industry and the production of environmental science.
David Bergé is an artist working with time-based media and book projects. He is the founder and current director of kyklàda.press
www.kyklada.press @kyklada.press
