Back to the Front: Tourisms of War?
by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio

COMMENT: This volume, with the French title 'Visite aux Armées: Tourismes de guerre', was created on the occasion of the exhibition 'SuitCase Studies: The Production of a National Past', by Diller + Scofidio, 1994, Caen.

Tourism is a mass phenomenon of the twentieth century, entailing a greater movement of people than the Second World War. This explains why tourism is an object of in-depth study for economists and land-planners alike: it represents an essential set of economic stakes which no region can afford to overlook.
When tourism is associated with war, it naturally raises particular questions. The tourist on seaside holiday is a different creature than the tourist who seeks out battle sites. The latter group is something of a paradox, those millions of people who are willing to devote their leisure time to come and see, remember, or conjure up, something they may know little or nothing about.
In this book, the American architects Diller + Scofidio set out to broaden the discussion of the relationship between tourism and war. In turn, taking possession of the territory, of the geography of tourism, they transform it into a field of investigation and propose an analysis that makes evident the role of rituals and institutions in the fabrication of our past, and in the ever-evolving contstruction of 'our national narratives'.