Slide 1
During these past few days of research, I walked from my accommodation to the supermarket many times. I started to realise that both the spaces I passed through on the way, and the supermarket itself, are in a kind of non-place state for me.
M&S is a global and modernised space, but it lacks a sense of history, relationships, and identity. It’s a functional space, designed for “passing through” rather than “staying” or “belonging.”
I began to wonder whether it can only exist as a place of consumption, or if it might also create some kind of connection with the world during people’s brief visits — or maybe miss that chance entirely. So this week, I explored the non-place characteristics of M&S.
Slide 2
I drew on the ideas of the French anthropologist Marc Augé. He defines non-places as spaces where people pass through but never truly belong — such as airports, train stations, or motorways.
These spaces are mainly about circulation and consumption. People take part actively, but they stay anonymous, passing by one another without real connection.
Supermarkets are a typical example. Their spatial organisation strongly shapes how people move, perceive, and relate to each other.
My research aims to use visual and spatial analysis to reveal how these seemingly neutral spaces quietly influence our social behaviour and cultural identity.
Slide 3
The artist Christian Jankowski explored this shift in his work The Hunt (1992). He entered a supermarket with a bow and arrow, turning grocery shopping into a kind of ritualised hunting. I was fascinated by this sense of disconnection.
For me, comparing the natural hunting ground and the modern supermarket is very interesting. A natural hunting ground is a place — shaped by hunting traditions, rituals, the identity of hunter communities, human–nature relationships, and specific geography. It’s embedded in history, culture, and personal memory.
Modern supermarkets, in contrast, offer endless products but erase the traces behind them. Consumers seem to enjoy “freedom of choice,” but in fact the options are already filtered by the market, and marketing strategies create a false sense of belonging.
Slide 4
This is where the contradiction appears. On one hand, M&S operates as a non-place. On the other hand, it creates pseudo place-making through origin labels and marketing stories — for example, “spring water from Scotland” or “from trusted British farms.”
These narratives turn geography into a commodity, reducing place identity to a marketing tool. It becomes a commodified memory, something sold as a symbol.
So in the same space, non-place and pseudo place-making coexist — and sometimes even clash.
Slide 5
I then recorded my movements in the supermarket again. Unlike last week, this time I used dynamic routes to track both myself and other customers.
Customers are constantly moving, but I froze their actions into static symbols. This method became a way to visualise and metaphorically express the patterns of non-place — anonymity, standardisation, and repetition.
Slide 6
In the next week, I will explore who the audience of this topic might be. I plan to invite other people to collaborate with me and build a kind of non-place archive, collecting their perspectives and emotional experiences.
Through this, I want to understand how these everyday non-places shape our social imagination.
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