Fake-ation

On September 22, Tom and I will head out for our brief vacation in Door County, about which I have posted before. But is that really what we are going to do ... ? 

Back in May 1998, a group of Leeds University art students revealed that instead of using the grant money given to them for its intended purpose of staging a student art exhibition, they had used it to go on a six-day holiday to Málaga on Spain's Costa del Sol. However, they said this use of the money was justified because the holiday was a form of performance art. They called the performance piece "Going Places." Click on that link for more details.


This explanation made a lot of people very angry (including the Arts Society that had given them the money). But then the students revealed another twist. They actually hadn't gone to Costa del Sol at all. They had remained hidden in Leeds the entire time. They got tans via sunlamps. The photos of them frolicking in Costa del Sol were actually taken in Scarborough. The elaborately staged fake vacation was their form of a student art exhibition.

And if you want to go even further back in history, some might argue that Marco Polo's trip to China was the most elaborate fake vacation of all time. Because some scholars suspect that Marco Polo never went to China. Instead he spent his time at the Black Sea, where he collected other traveler's descriptions of China, weaving them into a narrative that he presented as his own journey. 

 This is where we will be staying ... or is it?

One final point: Mitchell frequently posts delightful photos of the beach and environs  and even his [alleged] cats in Fuengirola, which is in the Province of Málaga. I'm not making any accusations, but ... that is the same Málaga where the Leeds students claimed to have vacationed.