ABOUT PLACES, NON-PLACES, AND MAKING THEM FEEL FAMILIAR
Everyone who has moved house at least once knows the overwhelming need to make the new space feel “lived-in” as fast as they could. Carrying one’s things and arranging them are the means to “domesticate” the unfamiliar, to give a place one’s own character, to bestow a part of oneself on it in order to, as a result, make it one’s own property. Making a place our own gives us a sense of satisfaction, and, above all, security. Creating an enclave and marking its borders are typical human behaviours. Separating oneself from others and differentiating between what is ‘mine’ and what is ‘yours’ are the temptations that are hard to resist. It is enough to provide an example of a childish desire to own a room whose door we can close and separate ourselves from the rest of the world whenever we like.
When we mark the borders of our property we create a place. A place is – according to the definition – “a part of a defined space which undergoes some processes and where something happens” (“Dictionary of Polish Language”, PWN). It is not an every space; it’s rather this specific, defined one. In the sociological understanding it is “domesticated” and marked by a human. And how do we call a space that is not a place? Marc Augé, a sociologist, calls it simply a non-place. This notion does not specify its feature, which is opposite to a feature of a place. It is nobody’s space, it does not have a purpose, and it is “a space of flow” (a term used by Manuel Castells). It is not nobody’s with regard to the lack of possessor, but rather to the lack of emotional relations between it and a human. Non-places are, according to Augé, airports, bus and railway stations, shops, supermarkets, petrol stations, various roads, motorways. These are the places where one stays, not because they like to, but because of necessity. The sender’s role is there is replaced with letters addressed to an anonymous addressee. A human becomes a user following a given pattern, which is adopted to achieve a particular goal.
The latest issue of “Autoportret” (“Self-portrait”) [2 (23) 2008] focuses on such spaces and actually resembles a non-place itself. This is because of the fact that five separate designers were entrusted with it. Each of them designed his own part of the periodical and own cover. We were thus given five projects of jackets (which, together with the main cover, provides six possibilities to choose from) and five different graphic solutions inside the magazine. This unconventional and intriguing idea combines perfectly with the content. But let us come back to the essence of the topic. Augé notices that nowadays non-places invade places more and more often, supersede them, destroy and annex them. Bypasses replaced allotment gardens and shopping galleries took the place of deteriorated tenement houses. The transformation does not depend on an individual and turns out to be very painful, because every conversion of a place to a non-place involves a sense of loss in people who have an emotional bond with a given space. Places are inside us, rather than vice versa.
This motif was touched upon in a few pieces, among others: Varieties of Death, That Is how Space Destroys a Place (Rodzaje śmierci, czyli o tym, jak przestrzeń niszczy miejsce) by Katarzyna Franke, where the author presents a tale of two small towns near Lipsko. As a result of a motorway construction and plans for a coal mine, the towns undergo a slow but inevitable process of degradation and sinking into oblivion. The article is accompanied by pictures taken by Franke in which deteriorated and abandoned buildings become symbols of loss and passing of time. Poundbury in photos by Steffi Klenz seems to be similarly desolated, although it is not abandoned. They are commented on in Marc Cousins’ story “Nonsuch.” In order to cut off from modernism Charles, the Prince of Wales, had an abstract idea to create a “traditional” English town and to carefully plan its “natural” development. The aim was to create a place which is far from anonymity of present day’s housing estates. But, as it is noticed by the author and clearly presented on in Steffi Klenz’s pictures, the feeling of familiarity cannot be imposed on. Artificial things will never dispose of their inner falsehood. Taming a place by force is not effective. The evidence for that is the coldness and the sense of emptiness seen in the photos, which through the atmosphere of suspension, bring to mind rather distressing pictures by Edward Hopper than a traditional, provincial town with its idyllic, cheerful disposition.
The articles: Third Places (Miejsca trzecie) by Paulina Borysewicz, Somewhere in Between (Gdzieś pomiędzy) by Anna Komorowska and Squatting as an Expression of Freedom and Wantonness (Squatting jako swoboda i swawola) by Jarosław Urbański talk about less radical, but at the same time more successful attempts to tame space and to give it the rank of a place. The need to transform all that is around us into something familiar and not anonymous finds its representation in creating squares beside houses by the residents, taking care of outdoor areas and wilful occupation of abandoned space by squatters. The tendency to treat every “no one’s” place as common and consequently worthy of being protected has recently come about as a result of the crisis of a place and a sudden decline of tamed spaces as a consequence of commercialisation [or rather “macdonaldisation,” as Marta Smagacz calls it in her article Places, Non-Places, and the Strategies for Taming Them (Miejsca, nie-miejsca i strategie ich oswajania)]. Spending time in such impersonal places leads to rooting the individual out and a decline of the sense of security, durability and stability. A human needs a place to exist in a normal way, as well as a place needs a human to come into existence. Without this interaction their functioning would be impossible.
What makes us stay in non-places so often? What makes us stay in places where, according to Augé, “everyone is lonely, but similar to others”? Maybe the reason for that is this very similarity; the sense of unity with the anonymous crowd, which creates an illusion of the feeling of security and acceptance. So, are we driven by the need to experience “the passive happiness of the lack of identity” and “the pleasure of playing roles” while combing shopping malls? Regardless of the reasons for their popularity, non-places have an established position in present-day culture. In such a situation we can only struggle for a little bit of “familiar” space. So, let’s give a familiar feeling to all that is around us, let’s create new places and, above all, let’s respect the already existing ones and enjoy them as long as we can. Probably, as Katarzyna Franke writes, “ (…) every place, like a human, will sooner or later die.”
Anna Spruch
Translated by Marta Barton
Discussed journals: Autoportret