It’s telling, like some mammoth statement of the power of capital it opened up on a random Thursday in March. It lay hidden in hoarding for years, and then just appeared to occupy the landscape, dislocate and redefine my sense of the area, and threaten my wallet with bankruptcy. It announced itself everywhere in the media, crowds of shoppers pushed their faces against the glass, and finally its doors swung open while they trampled each other in a rush to stores they’d marked out days in advance. 75, 000 people in the first day. Taking some time off work, with or without the boss’s permission. The place looks like the future used to look in films from the 1960’s, conveyor belts dragged us back and forth from floor to floor, as regular as an assembly line, while capsules of consumers shot up and down. Dundrum Town Centre does not bode well for how our lives are being ordered for us. This is a town centre, the promotional material boosts that ‘at the heart of it all is the community.’ There’s the gloss of a fountain and some benches outside, inside the gloss of a health centre that is yet to open and a crèche. This may be a town centre, but as Noami Klein stated recently enough, this is also an ode to the imperialist ambitions of the brand.

We no longer purchase them and bring them home, as supplements to lifestyles, now we move into them. In Dundrum, the town centre has moved itself into the House of Fraiser, BT2, Marks and Spencer etc etc. Without doubt all your old civil liberties can be left at the door, here there is a private security force, there will be no picnics unless of course the Bagel Factory is the provider, there will be no distribution of political literature unless of course it comes from Easons – there is nothing outside the sphere of consumption and unless we become totally subsumed to it, there is no place for us.

Labels: Politics, Rant, Society