From Places to Non-Places

Marc Auge explains and defines a place according to it’s relations, identity and history. What has gone on in the timeline of a specific place? Was a place, a ground for religious teachings? Will the place as one conceNred with Relation, Identity and History.


According to Marc Auge, non-places have no identity because they have no history, no relations and no communication between what existed and what is. They are temporary spaces to pass through like an airport, a point between two destinations (two places). It is a utopia, a none-space, it doesn’t exist geographically; an anthropological 

He goes on to explain the none-places of supermodernity such as the motorway, the airport, the train station. The non-spaces that get you to places. You go through them, you go by them, they take you to places. They are the in-between of places. 

The supermodernity is the excessive use of information and space. ‘He tells about major changes in our society, which are the excess of events in time and acceleration of history, overabundance of space and the individualisation of references.’ (LAVIOLETTE, 2012)  Auge argues that more and more of our time is spent in the supermodernity, in the non-place, it is a place of solitude of eternal transitioning between non-spaces. 

The term ‘space’ is noted to be different than ‘place’. ‘Space’ transcends into far more abstract terms like referring to an event of which has taken ‘place’ or applied to a distance between two points like (there is space left for to sit between me and the wall). On the other hand a place can be seen as an anthropological site, with history, usage and attachments to its location. 


What I think? 
Non-places are the spaces in-between two places. They are inbetween, they are temporary, they are the Utopian spaces, which only exists because of the excess of time, the creation of places. Do we need the state of limbo and existing through an eternal transitioning non-space? Can we leave a mark in the non-spaces and maybe progress through and transition the ideas into places? Can we make non-spaces into places of history and characteristics? 

Description: MAC OS:Users:Admin:Documents:Critical Debate:Week 2:hans-op-de-beeck3.jpg
Op de Beeck shows the viewer non-existent, but identifiable places, moments and characters that appear to have been taken from contemporary everyday life, aiming thereby to capture in his images the tragicomic absurdity of our postmodern existence. 


This instillation is representing a non-place. There are no humans in the image, it is gloomy with a tone of blue, no sign of life yet the traffic lights are on and they are diverting traffic. What traffic? This is an image of a non-place of nowhere! This image could of geographically anywhere, any place or any town; yet no one using it. Does it exist? Even though no one is using it, is it a non-place because it is meant to connect two places to one another?




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