non-place polarization
marc augé describes in "Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity" an interchangeable, transient location of no particular importance which is excised from the memory of those who travel through.
non-places are supermodern. too much is happening too fast and nothing leaves a trace when the cleaners come at the end of the day. every non-place of a particular archetype could be anywhere at all in the world, and each is catered towards the minimum social contract of people in the unit of one (1) person.
i love me a good non-place. there are several brand-spanking new malls from MIXC in shenzhen and each one is a vast white sparkling cut-from-2040 box with the same forty mainstay stores as the next. the new terminal B and C at laguardia evoke similar sensations of clean, efficient, robotic fugue as i step on moving walkway N on the way to metal tube XNNN to terminal airport ABC halfway around the country or world.
on the other hand a continual non-place traipse can wear very fast on the itinerant traveler. six hours alone on an unplanned stop is fluorescent purgatory in any plane/train/bus/store/lodging station of choice. when stranded solo in a non-place i have one move which is to start a conversation with whoever is sitting nearest me. it usually works; people are unusually willing to chat when bored out of their minds in a atomizing environment. the last time someone told me about working at google and then starting a startup and then the startup being bought by google and then going back to google and quitting once the equity vested. of course, awkward cold conversations can be avoided by procuring travel partner(s) ahead of time.
place has the inverse property. it does not need someone else because some of you is already there. i like to keep my physical identity small so maybe I could fit the place-ness of my existence into a carry on suitcase. included in this suitcase would be about a dozen rubber ducks and a hundred plastic ducks. my parents' house has undergone a less controlled process for three to four decades and the drawers and shelves are rife with the diecast cars and school projects of two children growing up.
place rewards solitude; non-place rewards company; everything in between is the premium mediocrifying of our world in the twenty-first century.
the middle is the non-place that has learned to charge more. xintiandi in shanghai is a brutal middle finger to architectural connoisseurs, repurposing the pelt of historic brick buildings and shoving a moncler or rolex inside. it asks for taste-decoding social tax that real places ask for, and provides none of the rooting that real places provide.
it scales because big capital™ figured out that semiotics could replicate at zero cost while logistics could be consolidated. the output is a globally identical local-feeling room that feels off. somehow a bangkok starbucks feels better than a tourist trap coffee shop with a pretty faux-neon sign on astroturf taped to the wall.
augé wrote that place and non-place are polarities, never pure in practice. the middle is not a mixture of the two. it is a non-place deceiver wearing a place costume. get that stuff out of here.