The folks at ŠUM have a new project, co-produced by Projekt Atol, called Plaza Protocol. It’s an amazing platform exploring an unfinished and disused shopping mall on the outskirts of Ljubljana.
Plaza Protocol is developing new formats and plots for and from an unfinished construction site of an underground shopping mall on the outskirts of the city. It happens through a series of collaborations with artists, designers, scientists, writers and engineers to create ways of engagement with this locality and accelerating economic and ecological processes of global scale that inform its transformations.
The project’s participants so far include Evelina Hägglund, Špela Petrič, Blaž Miklavčič, Domen Ograjenšek, Simon Sellars and yours truly.
I contributed an essay to the project called “The Geology of Malls” — a sort of personal history of shopping malls I’ve known, which is also a brief history of class conflict in 21st century Britain, with each mall both a product of and site for economic and political unease. Shopping malls, to my mind, are forms of capitalist cauterisation. This is an essay about holding the wounds open instead.
You can check out my essay by finding the little plot hole icon on your travels. I’d highly recommend exploring the project and having a walk around. It’s a magnificent platform, populating this disused space with a series of really fascinating digital interventions. And it is also ongoing! So check back for future additions.