superhost

 SUPERHOST
In a totally overtouristed ecosystem as the one in Apulia, SUPERHOST adopts camouflage as an
ironic/critical hypothesis of resistance, embracing a post-identitarian logic. It is a transient figure, a
liminal zone between hospitality and hostility, between the real and the fictitious—embodying what
Baudrillard called the purest logic of simulation: not a copy of the real, but its erasure through an
excess of signs.
SUPERHOST is a real/fake Airbnb that manifests through a dissolved identity in a state of
permanent metamorphosis, a relational device shaped by the flows of algorithms and reviews,
operating according to a Deleuzian rhizomatic model. In this dissolution of identity within the mesh
of desires and touristic expectations, a kind of environmental performativity emerges, echoing the
figure of the cyborg: neither nature nor culture, neither host nor guest, but interface.
Surfacing as a complex system of presentation strategies (of self, of the neighbor) and of
representation (of the self, of the other), SUPERHOST acts through forces that redefine, reorganize,
and re-express the forms of the visible. It is a contaminated aesthetic zone, a living ready-made, a
mise en abyme of the platform itself. From this perspective, representation becomes a cultural
prosthesis, and the self dissolves into its communicational avatar.
The perception and interpretation of SUPERHOST have nothing to do with truth or falsity;
here, spectacle replaces reality. Within this space, signs do not need to be true or false—only
effective. What matters is the credibility of the simulacrum, the performative power of the gesture.
Tourism has become a technology of the self, a self-branding practice immersed in the regimes of
visibility, activating micropolitics of the gaze, belief systems, and suspicion.