In seaside tourism destinations, two temporal levels overlap, constructing two only apparently parallel narratives. On the one hand there is tourism with its own seasonality, and on the other the life of those who reside there and interface with the permanent dynamics linked to the territory. Both of these temporalities determine spatial phenomena that contribute to constructing, altering and redefining both the physical and perceptual structure of the landscape.

The tourist searches the real landscape for an image built in his mind, the host tries to provide it to him in the most efficient way while having to live all year round with the transformations that this process triggers: from the dynamics of coastal erosion to the permanent landscape of the seaside culture made of recreational devices such as deckchairs and beach umbrellas. The experience of the landscape as an object of consumption or fetish coexists with deeper forms of relationship with the territory, which are expressed in historical evocations and local traditions.

The project for San Terenzo thus aims to investigate this complexity through a programme that would make the exhibition itself an opportunity to combine the tourist vocation of the place with the processes through which people identify with their territory.