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Abstract
What is the call of the mall? How are shopping malls producing a certain subjectivity if not even subjects? How could performance intervene in the bodily regime that governs this private property that invites the public to consume? By discussing Victor Gruens early drafts for the mall, the article explores possible interpretations of this kind of international architecture regarding the performativity it produces. The structure of the space set up certain constraints, the pace of the consumers is established by the floor the positioning of the plants and the interior, a certain conformist behaviour repeated by everybody entering the mall is dominating. The social figure of the mall rat seems to resist this domination, but this has to be discussed in a broader perspective. The article proposes to understand the mall as an ideological state apparatus producing a certain conformity as well as a certain deviant behaviour by interpellation. The work of the performance group LIGNA (Hamburg/Berlin) tries to establish a different logic beyond this dichotomy.