After spending a week in Victoria during the Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies Summer School, I felt a very strong sense of being an intruder in such a small and tidy community, which had somehow its quietness disturbed by this flock of students visiting the city for a few days. And that was in direct oposition with the pleads I heard during a meeting with the Mayor and some local authorities and shop vendors, and their desire of continuing to disrupt this “quietness” by attracting tourists to the city, using the mountains and the city’s communist history as a selling point. In a way, this resounded to me a lot with the idea of late stage capitalism and the absurd and hypocritical aspects of it.

As a result, I did a draft of an absurdist prospect sheet, selling travel packages to Victoria for visitors that want to explore its quietness and its “nothingness” – either its seemingly uninteresting and mundane things, or even the meaningless tokens of the communist days that still resist. That, for me, would consist of an imaginative utopia that you could explore by yourself, a chance to create an alternate history the way you’d find most appealing in a place where nothing really happens.