{"id":2668,"date":"2020-02-05T10:14:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T09:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stories-magazin.com\/?p=2668"},"modified":"2022-03-09T12:06:48","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T11:06:48","slug":"dead-mall-dead-mall-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vmm.eu\/en\/dead-mall-dead-mall-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead Mall? Dead Mall!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Isma\u00ebl\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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Isma\u00ebl Sanou about the Phenomenon Shopping Centre<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>
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\u201cVery soon there will be no more shopping centres!\u201d At least that is the opinion expressed by Isma\u00ebl Sanou, graduate of Berlin University of the Arts. How did he form this opinion? In his masters\u2019 thesis, Sanou, now a graphic designer and scenographer, not only explored the \u201cPhenomenon: Shopping Centre\u201d in great depth, analysing original, concepts and future prospects in the process; he also came to the conclusion that: \u201cMass consumption manages us and our environment. Sooner or later shopping malls will die out. What is more, we do not need a specific place to consume any more.\u201d Current trends, but also by the wealth of new ideas, crazy concepts and desperate revitalisation concepts of deserted shopping centres prove his point. It is definitely worth taking a look at his final dissertation \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t\t\t

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\u201cBy 2020, every fourth mall will be dead in the USA. Dead malls therefore offer the ideal experimental space for a new, climate-friendly city.\u201d Prof. Anette Baldauf, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n\t\t\t

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When he started his dissertation, Isma\u00ebl Sanou wanted to investigate the significance of the space that surrounds us when shopping in order to make it more lucrative and more interesting. Rather than reinterpreting the stores or shopping centres, he wanted to add something: He wanted to use the flow of people and offer them easy access to art and culture. He wanted to make knowledge and information accessible which otherwise was only to be found in museums and galleries. However, it seemed to be almost too banal to design an exhibition in the \u201cempty spaces\u201d in shopping centres \u2013 particularly as he noticed that these places harbour countless hidden messages, some of which we can decipher but which we do not always completely understand or want to understand. He therefore decided to examine the \u201cPhenomenon: Shopping Centre\u201d in more detail, going back to the origins and Victor Gruen, and analysed traditional and modern concepts that endeavour to integrate social life into these places, and came to the conclusion: \u201cThe shopping centre used to be a meeting place for everyone. It was not only for shopping, but also a place of entertainment. However, as the trend currently is towards online shopping, the shopping centres are losing their appeal: it will not be long until empty and decaying malls like those all over America will be seen in Europe as well. In my dissertation, I do not want to design a concept for the improvement or redesign of the consumer temples; rather I want to compile the characteristics and peculiarities, which contributed to the success of the shopping centres. I want to write an appreciation of shopping centres as such, but also critically examine them. For although we are all aware that advertising has a strong influence on our decision-making process and this often leads to our buying more than we had planned, we still allow ourselves to be seduced: We are shown that there is more than we have and need and it makes us believe that we can achieve everything if we consume. I view this change in values, which is particularly evident in shopping centres, with scepticism and I want this to be perceptible in my dissertation.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n<\/div>

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Criticism of consumption in a spatial installation<\/strong><\/p>\n

At Berlin University of the Arts Sanou took the \u201cVisual communication\u201d course in the department for spatial and exhibition design led by Prof. Gabi Schillig. He therefore not only looked into the theory of shopping centres as a type of building, but also scrutinised them from a spatial perspective: he looked closer at those areas in a mall in which experiences do not take place directly in store \u2013 the spaces between the shops, looking into the shop windows, in which shopping begins and ends and from which new consumer worlds want to entice us in again, even though we already wanted to leave. \u201cIn the aisles and relaxation zones, everyone wants to benefit: if the consumers are happy, so are the shop and mall owners. The aesthetics in these interspaces and the adjacent shop windows create huge value added for the products on sale.\u201d In order to present the findings and insights of his intensive research and to make it accessible to others, Sanou translated them into eight spatial installations of the same size, which he located virtually in the scenario of the \u201cdead\u201d Mall of Berlin. \u201cWhen shopping centres are abandoned sooner or later, then they will be the ideal place to put on an anti-consumption exhibition: as visitors look behind the fa\u00e7ade of mass consumption it should become clear how this happened.\u201d In the shopping centre opened in 2014, the eight spaces, which were devoted to eight overall themes, were therefore presented like foreign objects. The scenes entitled \u201cOmnipresent Consumption\u201d, \u201cDistortion\u201d, \u201cDeceptive Ideals\u201d, \u201cPurchased Relaxation\u201d, \u201cBehind Glass\u201d, \u201cEmpty Promises\u201d, \u201cFocus\u201d and \u201cExcesses\u201d, each with a twelve by eight metres footprint and classified into aisle and store areas, used materials and sound landscapes to reflect this confrontation with architecture, deceleration, advertising, capitalism, society, ideals and production.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>