Paper short abstract:

This talk discusses the mediated, mobilised practices of travellers who use mobile devices to locate, produce and consume their experiences of destinations. It analyses the role played by multiple experiences, practices and and localities of travellers in fashioning new selves and subjectivities.

Paper long abstract:

James Clifford has noted that travel is not merely about going places; it is a conceptual and geographic displacement intended to catalyse consciously enriching experiences. Concomitant with the rise of so-called experiential travel, changes in the production, consumption and mediation of such experience have 'de-placed' travel's purpose, shifting it from a phenomenon concerned with place to one focused on the self. In this talk, I discuss the mediated and mobilised practices of travellers who use mobile devices to locate, map, navigate, produce and consume their experiences of destination and of movement. Considering the ways travel exists across digital, material and sensory environments, I analyse the role played by multiple experiences, practices, relationships, social worlds and localities of travellers (both on the move and on and off the web) in fashioning new subjectivities of contemporary mobility. I question the components of these new subjectivities and the subjects produced out of digitised, narrativised and prosumed forms of mobility. If, as Roberto Simanowski has recently argued, the subjective experience of the present itself is being eroded by our penchant for structuring, capturing and fixing experience's moments, then the new digital practices of travellers become a key context for analysing the shifting natures of the social processes and technological mediation of mobility.