Description
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the PQ Best Publication Award in Performance Design & Scenography 2023Consuming Scenography offers an insight into contemporary scenographic practice beyond the theatre. It explores the ways in which scenography is used to create a global cultural impact and accelerate profits in the site-specific context of themed shopping malls. It analyses the effect of the architectural, aesthetic, spatial, material and sensory aspects of design through their performative encounters with consumers in order to offer a better understanding of performance design.In the first part the author explores the spatial seduction of an enclosed market space and traces the origins of scenographic temporality in permanent architectonic spaces for trade and commerce, from ancient Greek and Roman roofed markets and Oriental bazaars to 19th-century arcades and department stores to modern-day shopping malls.The second section addresses the site-specific theatricality of the shopping mall
Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Introducing Consuming Scenography 1 Staging Consumer Seduction: A Brief History 1.1 The market enclosure as a scenographic principle 1.2 Industrialising pleasure: Shopping arcades and department stores 1.3 Post-war functionalism: Shopping malls 2 Framing Consumption in Late Capitalism 2.1 Entertainment, please! 2.2 Theming the identity of consumption 2.3 Drama on sale 3 Themed Malls as a Global Trend 3.1 Make me look older: Montecasino 3.2 Shopping for education: The Ibn Battuta Mall 3.3 A boat trip to fantasy land: The Villaggio Mall 3.4 Have a safe flight: Terminal 21 4 Producing Experience 4.1 The magic of Disneyization 4.2 Technological wizardry 4.3 Aquatic fairy tales 5 Consuming Experience 5.1 Flâneurs or active consumers? 5.2 Surface semiotics 5.3 The body in the forged reality 6 The Deceitful Charm of Scenography 6.1 The echoes of history 6.2 The aesthetic universe 6.3 Social interaction with a price tag 6.4 Public space as a political stage 7 Spatial Flexibility: A Yearning 7.1 The fluidity of market changes 7.2 Flexibility matters 7.3 Double-crossed by urban dreams 7.4 Responsibility in the final act Notes References Index
