Place-specific haunting opposes the placeless corporate ‘third place’

Evidence

Haunting is about space as much as time — about the spaces where the time rift becomes perceptible, and, with Burial’s debut LP in particular, it was as if you were hearing double: hearing both the current dereliction and the former collective ecstasy. Flashbacks flaring in the gloom. What you are attuned to is a specific sense of place, as opposed to the “third place” — the space that is neither home nor work, but which combines elements of both. Spaces of consumer convalescence which could be anywhere. Burial’s “In McDonald’s” relocates the spatially-indifferent multinational capsule of the corporate franchise in a specific city: London, once again the capital of Capital. Once the sooty, smoggy centre of industrial capital, now the main hub of cybercapital. Open for business. Closed to almost anything else. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2430

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how artists re-territorialize corporate neutral ‘third places’ (McDonald’s, chain cafes) into haunted, place-bound sites of memory — location as resistance to franchise space.
• STORYSTEM: A story where McDonald’s franchises are described as relocating into specific localities — each one becomes a time-rift where past collective life bleeds through the logo.
• XREF: connects to: Postmodern city space lost its modernist sense of place and situatedness. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 308; Faux public spaces reduce visitors to consumers or threats — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 80

Broader Connections

• Postmodern city space lost its modernist sense of place and situatedness. #corroborates (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 308
• Faux public spaces reduce visitors to consumers or threats #corroborates (0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 80