Interscopic fan travelscape: Hybridizing tourism through sport and art

Introduction

Sport events have been considered as conduits of place-informed identity narratives in tourist destinations, especially when they intertwine seasonality and social practices (Hinch and Ramshaw, 2014). In fact, placemaking and homemaking in contexts of eventization are mediated in a variety of ways that reinforce branding initiatives engineered by moving image and advertising industries, fan groups and localities that wish to contain their heritage against the tide of such changes. Fans of such forms of popular culture often travel to these places to attend and/or participate in themed events which bring them close to experiencing practices associated with the celebrities they admire. Our primary objective in this article is to provide a theoretical analysis of how tourism is interwoven with sporting and cinematic popular culture, thereby creating a compound milieu for sport traveling aficionados.

We term this “Interscopic Fan Travelscape” (IFT) and apply our thesis on a particular locale: the Greek island of Amorgos, whose contemporary identity is part-defined by a sport-related seasonal event stemming from a film. To this end, we use the “Authentic Big Blue” (ABB), a nascent small-scale free-diving event hosted on Amorgos, which blends organically some sporting and cinematic facets of popular culture. The event is thematically based on the 1988 “Big Blue” film (Le Grand Bleu) by Luc Besson, which was primarily shot in Amorgos. Committed free-divers participate in this international competition, which also includes celebratory elements tied to the film and sport’s subculture. The event commemorates the film’s legacy for boosting free-diving worldwide and for making the island well-known as a tourist destination.

The term IFT encompasses the coexistence of two types of gazing and two gazes, which cross-fertilize in sport travel: the first (the “mediatized gaze”) is produced by mediated narratives circulating in films and other such popular culture forms, and the second (the “perfomative inter-gaze”) emanates from the embodied encounters of sports fans as they interact with each other. The first gaze has received extensive attention as pivotal to tourist motivation and even host community development (Beeton, 2016), but exactly how belonging is produced among tourists/fans remains less theorized (Reijnders et al., 2015; Roesch, 2009; Tzanelli, 2013a). Our theoretical model revises Reijnders (2011) thesis on lieux d’imagination, places produced through varied blends of tourist, media, and locative (place-specific) narratives about a tourist destination, by shifting emphasis to fan community inter-actions. Fandom-centric encounters exhibit behavioral patterns and traits mostly related to enactments of secular pilgrimage (Gladstone, 2013; Margry, 2008) and neo-tribes (Gyimóthy and Larson, 2015; Lundberg and Ziakas, 2018a). Fans as modern pilgrims tend to engage in emotionally intense journeys of devotion to, and reaffirmation of, their idolized pursuits, icons, and embodiments, which may range, for instance, from sports, fashion, and shopping to historic sites, events, and celebrities (Cusack and Digance, 2009; Hyde and Harman, 2011; O’Connor, 2018; Reader and Walter, 1993). Nevertheless, their attachment and membership may span across different fan (or brand) communities because of the commoditized over-supply of popular culture pursuits, symbols, and idols within a consumerist society. In this context, fans get self-organized in heterogeneous and fluid groups of neo-tribes, which are confined by similar interests, analogous lifestyles, common rituals, and shared language (Maffesoli, 1996). As a result, such neo-tribes produce temporary “homes” within the places that they visit, if only for a few days or weeks. This places event-based tourism among the drivers of societal change, turning the study of tourist into tourism mobilities into a perspective on society (Müller, 2018). The staging of events as spatial-temporal and transient activities provides a malleable terrain to flexibly tailor themed experiences that meet the neo-tribal pilgrim idiosyncrasies of fan-tourists (Lew, 2014).

Popular culture constitutes a common source of fandom-induced event-tourism, offering a range of media, signs, and genres to express fan allegiance, and collectively parade an identity tied to fandom qualities and shared values. In contrast to the predominant compartmentalization of popular culture and events to specialized forms of fan-tourism (e.g. film-, music-, sport-tourism), we consider blends of different genres. Such blends enable symbiotic effects and lead to the creation of new events that stand, for example, between ritual and theater, religion and entertainment, or sport and the arts (Lewis and Dowsey-Magog, 1993; Schechner, 1985; Ziakas and Costa, 2010). Such events can be characterized as “in-between” bearing a nexus of unsolidified interconnections, which are conducive to fluid neo-tribal patterns, while affording fans with opportunities to explore and symbolically proclaim how they perceive their object of fandom. This brings forward the need to better understand the underlying state of “in-between” event spaces that form amalgamated fan-travel experiences within the realm of popular culture. It also sheds light on a mélange of action that traverses the existent insulated taxonomies of tourism, events, and popular culture (e.g. Duignan and Pappalepore, 2021; Frost and Laing, 2014; Jiang and Yu, 2020; King et al., 2018).

The sport and art interface: Neo-tribal pilgrimage as serious tourism experience of popular culture

Travel to places featured in movies, is commonly referred to as (on-)screen tourism or popular culture tourism. Popular culture travel also stems from other expressive practices such as literature, television, arts, leisure, and sports (Lundberg and Ziakas, 2018b; Lundberg et al., 2018). This form of travel is a result of the consumption and appreciation by different forms of cultural expression, often commercial, easily accessible, and connected to everyday life via new technologies (Tzanelli, 2013a). Popular culture tourists are motivated by a multitude of desires. For example, the need to physically connect with a place, characters, and/or storylines that the audience has developed emotional ties with, through their consumption of popular culture is an important reason. Furthermore, the search for authenticity, belonging, and identity are other motivations (Lexhagen, 2018; Li et al., 2021; Lundberg and Lexhagen, 2012). The current growth of mass consumption of creative expressions, digitalization, and media convergence has proven central for the increasing need for popular culture travel among tourists and fans (Lundberg and Ziakas, 2018b).

Popular culture tourism has been described as a broad phenomenon, consisting of a web of interconnections. Identified areas are primarily film or on-screen travel, so, we clarify below how our definition of IFT is based on entanglements of embodied and digital mobilities. Niches such as heritage-tourism, arts/cultural-tourism, music- tourism, sport-tourism, literary-tourism, and events are all part of this web (Lew, 2014). A common domain that enables the entanglement of the above popular culture expressions is event-tourism by inducing visitation to destinations that host events as attractions (Getz and Page, 2016). Also, central to most of these areas is the fan “tribe” and its creativity, interest, and commitment. The fan practices of a tribe have been under study showing the need for fellowship, identity and belonging (Geraghty et al., 2019). From a tourism management perspective, place-making, destination effects, and stakeholder power and conflict have been under study (Lundberg and Ziakas, 2018b).

Fan behavior and practices can be explained by neo-tribal theory (Maffesoli, 1996), which we develop as a particular strand of post-secular community theory. Neo-tribes constitute temporal gatherings of people with fluid boundaries and floating memberships (Bennett, 1999) who have shared hobbies, life routines, rites and expression (Hardy et al., 2013). Neo-tribalism contends that modern identities are fluid and fragmented since they are built around commodities, images, and texts as a result of taste, esthetics, and the emotions stimulated through engaging in a common activity (Bennett, 1999). Subsequently, neo-tribes tend to be consolidated around brand names and commercial goods (Cova and Cova, 2002), while they exhibit less deep lines of division and more fleeting associations than subcultures (Bennett, 1999). Hence, they form fluctuating groupings with members shifting from one group to another and being fellows of multiple tribes (Granovetter, 1973).

According to Maffesoli (1996), members of neo-tribes are based on a state of mind and lifestyle that represents a common sense of community and shared taste, emotions, routines, and consumption patterns. Given the social and transient nature of neo-tribal behavior, it seems that event-tourism provides a suitable popular culture platform for temporary gatherings to take place enacting through rituals, a common sense of community, and parading their identity (Lundberg and Ziakas, 2018a). The utility of events as symbolic social spaces (Ziakas, 2016; Ziakas and Costa, 2012) concurs with the need of neo-tribes to express, in public, their mindsets by performing shared interests and activities. In this respect, neo-tribal ties exemplify intersections of not just inter-group affiliations and commonalities, but intra-group engagements in public event settings, where such “weak” neo-tribal ties are better reinforced or contested.

This performative enactment of lifestyle within a neo-tribe is analogous to communitas defined by Turner (1974) as the temporary antistructure created in public events wherein everyday boundaries, statuses, and ranks cease to apply and participants feel as equals. Furthermore, neo-tribes, by performing their own esthetic ethic, they seek to create moments in which to live out their own values and create temporary pockets of sovereignty over their own existence that exemplify sociality, solidarity, hedonism and vitality (Riley et al., 2010). Neo-tribal fans are inclined to form ephemeral spaces in which to perform a set of shared practices that frame a common bond providing s series of social, hedonistic gatherings that celebrate their identity and belongingness. Event-tourism may accentuate the effects of these processes as it prompts mobility of fans to be away from home, traveling in an idealized or “sacred” setting, attached to their fandom where they can develop stronger social bonds and affinities. In this manner, fans demonstrate their devotion to popular culture icons and pursuits, a form of travel closely linked to notions of secular pilgrimage, through which new temporary homes are produced (Müller, 2018).

The viewpoint of secular pilgrimage concerns journeys to non-religious sites that have affective and spiritual significance for their participants while epitomizing acts of devotion, ritual, and worship (Geraghty, 2018; Gladstone, 2013; Margry, 2008). Destinations may encompass sport stadia, film locations and places connected with iconic celebrities and spectacular events or performances that have been sacralized. Heritage usually adds to the communal experience of secular pilgrimage. For example, as shown in the case of Melbourne Cup horserace, the event’s traditions (i.e. sweepstakes, ceasing work for the duration of the race, and champagne breakfasts) serve as consumerist rituals that reinforce spiritually the Australian identity of individual attendees (Cusack and Digance, 2009). Recent Olympic mega-events, such as Beijing 2008, London 2012, and Rio 2016, staged native cultures and histories in spiritual styles involving shared ethnic memories, traumatic incidents, and contributions to world civilization all at the same time (Tzanelli, 2010, 2013b, 2017). Through blends of audio-visual (broadcast segments) and embodied (live cultural performances) forms of staging the host city’s and nation’s culture, mega-event ceremonies re-created native atmospheres and environments for global consumption: as regional myths, characters and artifacts upgraded to national symbols (Beijing 2008); labor utopias connected to the Industrial Revolution (London 2012); cultures of migration and community-making stemming from dance forms and music traditions, such as samba (Rio 2016); and hybridized local-global forms of tradition and modernity in new media spheres (Tokyo 2020 handover).

The intersection of sport and devoted fan-travel is captured in the sport-tourism literature (Weed and Bull, 2009). The different types of sport-tourism including active (i.e. traveling to participate in sport), event (i.e. traveling to attend or take part in events), and nostalgia-heritage (i.e. traveling to venerate sports halls of fame, sport museums and venues), illustrate the different ways fans engage in pilgrimage journeys associated with their sport fandom. Events may converge active and heritage sport-tourism in celebrating aspects of sport tied to a destination (Green and Chalip, 1998; Ziakas, 2014). Further, events may assist fans to relive a valued social experience, for instance, when they travel alongside other supporters to attend their team, nostalgic recollections of past trips are vital for repeated travel (Fairley, 2003). Similarly, participatory events enhance repeated purchase by leveraging celebratory aspects of sport tied to history, tradition, and nostalgia that reaffirm the social identity of participants (Christine Green, 2001; O’Brien, 2007; Ziakas and Boukas, 2016). The concept of serious leisure is particularly relevant here for the expression of unique values in sport. It explains the systematic pursuit of an amateur activity by participants who find it fulfilling and thus develop a career trajectory in acquiring skills, knowledge and experiences (Stebbins, 2020). Accordingly, event participation can encourage and facilitate career development and progression in a sport activity (Getz and McConnell, 2011; Green and Jones, 2005). Social identification with the activity turns sport event settings into serious sport event spaces, which make possible career progression in relation to serious leisure (Lee et al., 2016).

Consequently, it is important to unpack the compound milieu that attracts sport traveling aficionados to embark on neo-tribal pilgrimage as a serious tourism experience. This journey can be triggered, reinforced, and celebrated within the context of a sport event and its host destination’s popular attractions and amenities. Sports literature lacks a consideration of the ways the experiential and the audio-visual dimensions of fan communities come together to produce atmospheres. Atmospheres are the effects of connection between human subjects and event destinations, or what we may call the affective and sensory residues of spiritual journeys in location, or underwater in our case (Tzanelli, 2020a). Such journeys can feature as distillations of intersecting mobilities (Gibson, 2016: 144): on the one hand, they disrupt the ordinary state of things, but on the other, they assemble ephemeral communities of interests in actual events. Such events also connect to philosophies of living/life, because they allow participants (free-divers) to see the world as something emerging through activity/performance, a world in process (Peters, 2016: 27). Event-tourism represents a connective frame for the convergence of sport fandom and travel setting allowing popular culture participants to change the very frame through which the world is perceived (Žižek, 2014: 10–11).

In this multipart scaffold, while the transience and fluidity of neo-tribalism may seem to contradict with the continuity and longevity of serious leisure careers, the living experience of social identity, spirituality, and consumerist rituals enacted in event-tourism spaces bestow fans with flexibility for travel behavior encompassing characteristics of both neo-tribalism and serious leisure. Event tribes, therefore, may be a mix of fans in different leisure career stages and do not usually have stable membership as fans may shift from one tribe to another. Nevertheless, events represent temporary spaces to form communitas by sharing values and practices that celebrate their fandom lifestyles, bonds, and identities (Ziakas, 2014). The link between sport and travel settings of popular culture is innate and instrumental in this regard. They bring together shared fan practices and have common roots: culture, tourism, and serious leisure that provide opportunities for neo-tribal expressions and identifications yielding simultaneously direct business and entertainment outcomes.

This organic synergy is inhibited, however, by predominately viewing sport in isolation and not in relation to, or part of, culture and other domains of the public sphere. In fact, when such popular culture practices are not simply connected to places but also natures and environments, as is the case with our studied event, they become conducive to the production of post-secular identities, which are based on the principles of slow consumption, slow tourism and eco-esthetic norms and values (Fullagar et al., 2012). This differs significantly from what Brooker (2007: 442–443), following Soja’s (2000) “magical hyperrealism,” as the subversive potential of fan performances in urban contexts of political crisis. Brooker’s discussion of such liminal performances by urban film pilgrims is based on entirely fictional scripts (e.g. they are simulations of science fiction apocalyptica such as Blade Runner), whereas our context focuses on marine environments outside the city and involves the performance of an extreme sport. There is no evidence from our fieldwork that free-divers “escape” a crisis, only that they are committed to an esthetic connection to the marine environment.

As we explain below, free-diving competitions prompt the athlete’s engagement not just with the marine elements, but the natural world of the sea as an actant with a voice in the free-diving event (Tzanelli, 2020b). Braidotti (2013) and other post-humanist scholars, who explore human entanglements with nature and its animate floral and faunal worlds, refine our neo-tribal approach. Weak-tie community-bonding does not take place only between its human participants but is consolidated at the intersection between their communications and their individual engagement with the natural world as a world of wonder. This is a magical-realist world that amplifies reality to such an extent, that the free-diver experiences a post-religious communion with the sea (Tzanelli, 2020a, 2020b). The event itself is a meta-narrative of such processes, which attempts to recycle free-diving viewpoints (experience) and its existing constructions (films) in various degrees of success.

Conceptualizing the interscopic fan travelscape

Evidently in the ABB case, the convergence of sport and art in the tourism realm creates a polysemic context of fandom that significantly enhances the experience of participants. Fandom, in this sense, is expressed, performed and experienced in multiple ways through a spectrum of media and signs that create what we call a “fan travelscape.” Event mobilities conform to the rules of framing by media systems. Especially hybrid touristic events such as the ABB, both visually engage audiences and invite embodied performativity of their thematic focus (free-diving) (Hannam et al., 2016: 8). Culture, while is the common source of sporting and artistic pursuits, is compartmentalized according to occasional fan idiosyncrasies. But again, the search for communal meaning reconfigures compound travelscapes of fandom that exhibit a range of characteristics and behaviors, which are represented by cross-cutting complementary genres, activities and tourist experiences. This leads us to postulate that when sport and art come harmoniously together, they can produce a rich confluence of genres and meanings capable of transcending conventional taxonomic dichotomies and intensifying fan experiences. For this to happen, it is necessary that the different genre elements work in a complementary manner. In this vein, the fan travelscape can amplify the overall tourist experience by producing an array of interconnected polysemic, dramatic, hedonic, atmospheric, and imaginative effects that strengthen perceived meanings of embodiment, aestheticization, and authenticity about fans’ pilgrimage journey. We name this mosaic of experience an “Interscopic Fan Travelscape,” defined as the multifaceted and coordinated setting, which merges physical, imaginary, atmospheric, and affective elements into a cohesive whole.

As already explained in the introduction, the “scopic” element suggests two processes that cross and interact all the time: the first (“mediatized gaze”), which involves the mobilization of semantic fields drawing on mediated stories, is an extension of Urry and Larsen’s (2011) “tourist gaze” and Hollinshead’s (2009) “world-making authority” as the scopic apparatus that the tourism experts manufacture to produce tourism. The second (“performative inter-gaze”) concerns the presence of connected neo-tribal gazes in the performance of embodied mobilities (free-diving). With regards to the latter, Germann Molz (2014) suggested the presence of a friendly form of “surveillance” in the production of travel mobilities, which forms the tourists’ hospitable behavior within and across travel networks. Neo-tribes mobilize these two gazes to perform in embodied and virtual ways tourism and the traveling mindset (de Botton, 2003). Where performance teaches the popular culture participant to approach place and culture with appropriate humility, virtual engagement repositions them simultaneously as guardians of codes of conduct and as audio-visual hedonists. The two gazes produce travel through a confluence of ideas, myths and even commercialized imaginaries of place and performance we associate with Appadurai’s (1990) imagined blocks of action (e.g. ideoscapes, mediascapes). Such a travelscape may more easily stem from blending a variety of genres to act symbiotically adding a degree of significance to one another.

Therefore, the term “interscopic” stands for such “in-between” configurations. Based on the ABB case, Figure 1 shows the example of such an IFT configuration and its understructure underpinning the junction of event, sport, cinema and destination. From this perspective, a synthesis of genres is always incomplete, although they can be profitably merged. Genres keep their original distinctiveness, but they are also able to create interlocked cohesiveness. Simply put, this practically means that it is useful to design a coordinated mélange of performance elements combining different genres in a manner that augments various facets, expressions and meanings of the fan travelscape. A comprehensive take on popular culture tourism provides ample room for creative and visionary design of IFTs.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Understructure of the Interscopic Fan Travelscape in ABB.

The study of IFTs offers insight into the possibility of blending different genres as modes of expression that create symbiotic effects. It considers the inter-textuality of meaning and cross-sectionality of structural elements that the synergy of genre categories may entail. It aims to identify how genre categories may function strategically in a continual process of construction and deconstruction (Briggs and Bauman, 1992). For example, the symbiotic relationship is enabled between ritual and theater (Lewis and Dowsey-Magog, 1993; Schechner, 1985), while the relationship between play and ritual enhances complementary frames of meta-communication (Handelman, 1990). Therefore, “in-betweenness” is becoming a common pattern: between literature and recitation; between religion and entertainment (Schechner, 1985), or between sport and the arts (Ziakas and Costa, 2010). The prospects of “in-between” (or interscopic) fan travelscapes are fruitful in terms of expression, creativity and exploration, a rethink of the conventional, as well as a search for identity, fellowship, and authenticity. Put otherwise, the design of IFTs indicates how people perceive the conditions that constitute the construction of alternative realities and how they move forward to materialize them.

Central to the materialization of these realities is the creative synergy that such events as ABB invite between participants and event designers via the very performances of the former. Much like close-knit filiate groups, free-divers produce worlds of action in the tradition of cinematic genres but also the traditions of post-secular pilgrimage that uses virtuality as a “third space” or platform, on which one becomes a hero for a few minutes and a community member for a few days. This makeshift space is a particular version of world-making that transcends the influence of media frames (Hollinshead and Suleman, 2018), as it reframes performance through personal experience. At the same time, because the ABB is staged by experts in the particular hybrid event, experience feeds back via them into its staging. The next section delineates the IFT of ABB.

The ABB event: Setting and analysis

The ABB free-diving international tournament is a privately-owned initiative led by a renowned Greek female sport broadcaster and journalist. Its organization is entwined within networked capitalism structures pursuing entrepreneurial practices to generate alternative revenue streams and profits mainly through sponsorship and value co-creation. It is a small event, attracting divers (minimum 30 and maximum 70 athletes) from all over the world partaking in the tournament, the free-diving community, and to experience the destination and its association with the movie The Big Blue. The event also attracts spouses/family members and friends of athletes who attend the event to support the athletes as well as experience the (film) destination/event. In addition to these attendees, a small number of visitors attend as a result of their interest in free-diving, the free-diving community, and the destination/event’s association with the movie. However, this third group is very small compared to other sport events, likely due to free-diving not being a spectators’ sport. There appears not to be a visible hierarchy between these visitor segments mainly due to the commemorative and interlinking nature of the event that blurs distinctions between film fans and free-divers. The film is the unifying frame of reference providing a series of identifications to fans relevant to their past experiences. Accordingly, there is an effort to bridge free-divers with those who cannot dive within the celebratory atmosphere of the event. Nevertheless, the main activities of the ABB event are primarily targeted toward the first two (and largest) visitor segments—the athletes and their accompanying family/spouses/friends.

The Greek island Amorgos, where the ABB takes place, is the easternmost island of the Cyclades Island group. Besides the Monastery of Hozoviotissa and its beaches, it is mostly known for featuring in Luc Besson’s 1988 film Le Grand Bleu [The Big Blue], (GNTO, 2020). The event commemorates the film for helping to boost free-diving as a sport and turning Amorgos into a recognized international tourist destination. The plot of the film revolves around the rivalry between the protagonists—Enzo and Jacques, two childhood friends, now world-renowned free-divers. It is based, however heavily adapted for cinema, on the real life of French free-diver Jacques Mayol and has been acclaimed as a cult classic providing insights into the free-diving community (IMDB, 2020). In 2017, the first ABB was organized to celebrate the association between the film and the island attracting international participation. The following year, the second tournament was organized in conjunction with the 30-year anniversary of the film release doubling to more than 40 athletes. The event is held on September, lasting approximately 2 weeks, starting with a training week followed by the tournament. The competition week commences with a welcome reception and concludes with a closing ceremony. The event is held concurrently with the “Amorgos Gastronomy Week,” initiated and coordinated by ABB, celebrating local food culture (ABB, 2020; Municipality of Amorgos, 2020).

The event holds a close connection to the film. Apart from its name, the organizers included in the program scene re-enactments of the film, selected as diving site a place featured in the film, invited as VIPs cast and crew at the event, used film photos, posters and music, and screened at public relevant documentaries. All these programmatic elements helped to create a celebratory atmosphere reviving the meaning(s) of the film and spirit of free-diving as a sport that shapes its identity and subculture. According to event organizers and participants, this was the reason that “authentic” was added in the name of the event as it is intended to provide a genuine representation and lived experience of free-diving values, as projected through the film and felt in the event respectively. These values concern primarily athletes’ love of the ocean, connecting to nature, exploring the sea-depth and infinite, balancing human abilities to survive in the water, trusting but also contesting co-athletes, exceeding the human limits and survival instincts, all in search of another immaculate, pure world that is however inevitably unapproachable. Subsequently, staging such international events entails recycling narratives on utopias of untouched environments, which are inevitably colonized by event participants, however respectful they may be of these environments (Sheller, 2009). Yet, the production of such “privatopias” of sport-tourism mobilities continues to feed into and be sustained by imaginaries of ecosystemic integrity and environmental authenticity. The cinematic origins of ABB draw on such imaginaries of marine underworlds, which in its narrative appear as a version of utopian rurality: the bucolic beauty of lush greenscapes is substituted by pristine seascapes (Tzanelli, 2018: 65). The tourist business’ “constructive orchestration of tonality” (Thrift, 2008: 92) for the cinematically famous island of Amorgos, cannot but modify the actual local textures and sensory experiences that travelers tend to associate with aquatic island utopias (Sheller, 2004).

Themes like the above were originally visualized in Besson’s film and disseminated globally. There was an added element in the ABB program that intensified the athletes’ experience: the Underwater Gallery titled “On a Single Breath,” a photography exhibition staged in two caves approximately 17 m under the water. The exhibition had its stand at the site of the event with promotional posters and photos. Toward the end of the competition, a public viewing of the gallery underwater was scheduled with free-divers and scuba-divers attending. There was lighting with special effects as the photographer/free-diver, Stefanos Kontos, and the team of fellow free-divers who helped him with the event, used underwater lenses with special filters that toned up the colors of the photographs, which were made from stainless steel. The themes of the photos were about the Greek marine underworld, which according to Kontos presents geomorphological characteristics and hosts species specific to the region (Tzanelli, 2020b). Free-divers were staying in the caves for 2–3 minutes and then returning to the boat. The gallery-diving was scheduled for half an hour, but lasted more than 1 hour because the divers continued to dive to the caves.

The gallery was seen as a privileged and exclusive performative space for free- and scuba-divers: distinctions amongst divers of different ability and in various career stages were suspended through their festive participation in the ceremonial diving at the same time. The gallery-event, which was open to all visitors, pluralized the purpose of free-diving and scuba-diving: for professional and amateur divers, it became an occasion to promote their collective commitment to the sport, which is also a lifestyle. But for Kontos and local tourist authorities and business, it familiarized all visitors to guided diving and the rich atmospheres of Greek seascapes. This transformed free- and scuba-diving rituals into educational portals to marine utopias, while also attempting to reinforce free-diving community performances and enable their global projection in virtual areas as travelscapes among other forms of travel and tourism (Tzanelli, 2020b).

Internal logics of ABB’s design

The ABB and its satellite events produced a blended virtual/cinematic and physical/embodied field of action and activities inviting analysis. Our analysis builds on a previous study that examined symbolic action and value co-creation processes in ABB (reference removed for anonymity). By employing a lens that viewed the event as a social drama, the study demonstrated the event’s capacity to act both as symbolic social space and multistakeholder value co-creation platform. Three overarching themes were shown to epitomize the experience of participating fan-tourists: connectedness, communion and belonging. These themes permeated the instantiation of shared meanings and consequently indicated a set of “instantiators” enacted in the event space, including openness and inclusivity, sense of community, ritual and celebration, trust, and bonding. Their enactment revealed a dramaturgical world-making stage in which co-creative instantiators embodied shared meanings, thereby exemplifying the internal logic of the event’s organization and design. Connectedness promoted “modes of association” projecting the event as “a way of being and becoming.” Communion prompted “acts of fellowship” envisioning the event as “a journey on a single breath” in styles comparable with those adopted by film-tourism fans (e.g. Buchmann et al., 2010), but also dissimilar to them, regarding their eco-esthetic nature. Belongingness cemented “blocks of cohesion” imagining through the event alternate “(sea-)worlds of discovery and solidarity.” The organic relatedness of these metaphoric statements magnified instantiation, enhancing the significance of the event and its dialectics of meanings between the ideal and the real.

The analysis of instantiators captured how participants were connecting, communing and belonging to the free-diving community of ABB, but also revealed the event’s underlying elements: the free-diving sport dynamics (trust and bonding), film legacy, event augmentations (underwater exhibition, rituals, gastronomic week), and event atmosphere (open, celebratory and ritualized). These produced the event’s symbolic social space in a co-creative fashion, facilitating the expression and performance of shared meanings. The co-creative substratum was enabled by blending film (fictional) and sport (nonfictional), shaping the event’s space in ways that allowed fictional entities to interact with reality. The blend bestowed the event with a resonant dramaturgical frame: the ABB mirrors the social worlds of free-divers and reflects ideal versions of life linked to the ocean, companionship and nature. This verifies their membership to the global free-diving community, while providing symbolic performative channels for connecting, communing and belonging within the event, thus working together toward its co-creation. Blends of the fictional and the real generated alternative contrasting views of the world and the free-divers’ place in it, pluralizing understanding of their relationship to the oceanic underworld and nature.

Understanding the internal logics of ABB’s organization and design delineates the event’s space as a serious tourism milieu of neo-tribal pilgrimage. The ABB constitutes a cultural apparatus that blends sporting and artistic visualization fan practices. Sport is enacted and exemplified in symbolic terms, as the ABB is commemorative: it pays tribute to the film, which connects to the athletes’ first involvement with free-diving and neo-tribal community-building. A tapestry of popular culture standing between film legacy and local heritage supports ABB, including arts with cinema, photography, and music; leisure and active living with the prominence of free-diving as sport and physical activity; and the island’s local food culture advertised in a dedicated gastronomic week. Although genres maintain their own structure, their organic confluence projects a functional unity with separate elements contributing synergistically to the event. This organic blending is not the outcome of a deliberate strategy by organizers but the result of an “emergent” tourist setting, driven by experience and know-how (Tzanelli, 2020b).

The convergence of sport and art allows fertile complementarity among different event elements. This amplifies the experience and assigned meanings of participants who possess multiple identities: athletes, fans, and tourists-visitors. For example, in the underwater gallery athletes dived as arts fans to enjoy photography “on a single breath,” experiencing the gallery in its natural environment. This cements the social identity of free-divers and their relationship with the underwater world, marked by their search for authenticity, as an effort of capturing the moment, while approaching the infinite of the sea’s bottom by holding their breath. Authenticity signifies free-diving ideals of reconnecting with the natural environment and an unexplored water world under conditions hostile to human life so athletes can only be visitors. Authenticity is also experienced in the gastronomic week in another form, where athletes as tourists have the opportunity to become familiar with the island’s local food culture. Both stages connect behind the notion of native land, which can be experienced through various mediations of embodied rituals and sensory qualities: “Greek nature,” whose atmospheric dimensions (feeling the water, touching its creatures and enjoying traditional recipes) may undergo some degree of technical manipulation (photographic production, cooking), without allegedly losing its essence or purity.

The projection of the underwater world as an ideal stimulates imagination and constructs alternative realities tied to the film, which are instantiated in the event space. These views of participant-athletes revolve around ideal world-making versions of free-diving as a quest for exploring the underwater world and nature, and finding in this journey an inner balance that may transform them in profound ways as they learn something new about themselves in their attempt to connect with the oceanic world. The above alternate realities suggest utopian atmospheres that participants seek to approach in ABB. For example, the underwater gallery indicates the performative value of taking part in an activity that celebrates the essence of free-diving as they define it: on a single breath. This symbolic ritual enabled the concerted dedication of free-divers to dive at the same time and celebrate collectively the gallery and what it represents. The ritual-like atmosphere was amplified polysemically with the help of photography and lighting blending with the natural underwater world. This confluence of genres and signs demonstrates the value of coalescing sport and the arts performatively and symbolically in order to magnify their synergistic effects (Chalip and McGuirty, 2004; Ziakas and Costa, 2010). Synergies practically concern enhancing polysemic, hedonistic, atmospheric and imaginative effects, while experientially amplifying perceptions of performance authenticity, embodiment, and aestheticization. The potential for such synergies is articulated by the “dramatization” of affective and cognitive components in events. For example, adding music, colors and video screenings in a sport event amplifies its inherently dramatic character (uncertainty of outcome). Subsequently, the fusion is common as well as the use of embedded rituals (opening/closing ceremonies) that enhance liminality and social connectivity, sometimes enabling communitas.

Concluding remarks

In this paper, we integrated neo-tribalism, serious leisure, and fan pilgrimage within the context of event-tourism and particularly free-diving. The unique blending of sport and art in ABB allowed us to explore their reciprocal configuration and synergy. We hereby conceptualized IFT as a composite setting of popular culture, which amalgamates physical, imaginary, atmospheric and affective components in a cohesive whole. To give a concrete shape to the generic IFT theoretical configuration, Figure 2 shows its components that comprise two interrelated spheres. One is the compound stage of popular culture that provides opportunities for the enactment of expressive cultural practices blended in different formats. The other exemplifies the lay of neo-tribal serious tourism space constituted by objectified fan-tourist gazes that represent embodied mobilities in performative pursuits, mediatized scripts of norms and expected behaviors, and the surrounding destination milieu in which fan-travel takes place. This creates a kaleidoscope of synergistic spatial configurations, performance repertoires and shared meanings that foster kinship links and relationships among fans. The study of IFTs may throw light on such composite forms of neo-tribal social organization and their potential for reimagining/recreating social spaces and realities.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

The Interscopic Fan Travelscape (IFT).

As others have suggested, places are vicariously “revealed” when processes of networking among tourists and destinations are activated through filmmaking and advertising, ‘helping to “[build] strength in peripheral and ‘under the radar’ areas” previously lacking economic and cultural recognition (Lew, 2014: 172; see also Frost and Laing, 2014; Barbini and Presutti, 2014). In this article, we explained how Amorgos now acts as a tourism destination partly thanks to its constant “informal interpretation” as a popcultural pilgrim center, a blended film- and sport-inspired “node” (Tzanelli, 2013a). For these reasons, we invite tourism theorists to pay more attention to the systematic investigation of “in-between” event settings as emerging compound forms of popular culture and tourism. This line of inquiry can help interdisciplinary studies to strengthen the foundations of popular culture tourism, ultimately bridging dichotomies between fan practices such as sport versus arts, thereby leading toward more inclusive and cross-cutting approaches.

Conceptualizing IFTs as entanglements of composite popular culture settings and devoted (serious) fan-travel of neo-tribes opens up avenues for examining links between environmental consciousness, individualized pilgrimage, and the (re)constitution of public spaces in ways akin to alternate world-realities. Future research may apply the IFT theory to different events and sports such as individual outdoor pursuits (e.g. climbing or hang gliding), mass participation or spectator sports (e.g. marathons, triathlon, hiking, amateur team-sport) and how they are linked to the arts. We proffer that the premises of our IFT model are applicable also in other contexts. The model’s flexible nature respects the hybrid confluence of expressive cultural, rather than political practices, their emergent atmospheric configurations and underlying meaning structures that epitomize post-secular neo-tribal behaviors in new tourist settings.