The Tulca Freedom Trail - a web based psychogeographical project created for Tulca 2007 by Conor McGarrigle :: November 10, 2007; 3:30 pm - Conor McGarrigle invites you to join him on a guided tour of the Freedom Trail and a free flowing conversation on freedom, art, maps, cultural tourism, situationism and the art of getting lost; leaves from 1-5 Merchants Road, Galway.

The Tulca Freedom Trail is a self guided audio tour based on a remapping of the famous Boston Freedom Trail to Galway. Participants equipped with a map and the authentic audio guide walk the route of the Boston Freedom Trail - commemorating the events of the American War of Independence - which has been remapped to the streets of Galway. The tour draws on the historic connections between Galway and Boston, explores the troubled concept of American freedom in the contemporary political climate and encourages the user to see Galway in a new and unexpected way.

The project is part of an ongoing series of work entitled Cultural Tourism which seeks to facilitate a culturally minded audience in reducing their carbon footprint by enjoying the cultural highlights of the world without leaving their home town.

Tourism is essentially a cultural exchange, we go there to experience their culture they come here to experience ours and we are all collectively enriched in the process. In reality however experiencing other cultures can mean re-enacting a number of cultural set pieces whether it’s visiting specified cultural locations or walking the local culture trail. Cultural Tourism sets out to add in an element of familiarity to cultural tourism allowing the tourist to re-enact a cultural ritual of proven cultural worth that is already familiar to them. The aim is to take a ritual which has been repeated an infinite number of times and to transfer it to a different location where it is stripped of specific local reference and use it as a psychogeographical tool to interrogate and disrupt the users’ experience of their urban environment.

Drawing on the Situationalist idea of the psychogeographical dérive the project seeks to gently subvert the experience of cultural tourism by transferring a cultural experience from it’s ‘proper place’ to another city where it has no specific relevance. This disruption frees the user to experience the city in an unexpected way and may become the basis of another cultural experience independent of the culture industry. The Tulca Freedom Trail is a refinement of a concept first developed in the artist’s Joyce Walks Project.