13terShop (2007)

13thShop
{13terShop}

Florian Thalhofer
Kolja Mensing
31 days in a shopping mall
Korsakow film, blog, book
Arbeitnehmerkammer, Bremen

We are all consumers

There was a time when people were citizens, now they are consumers. And some people spend their lives in shopping malls. Whether they work there or whether they hang out there. Shopping malls are modern towns market places: People go there, not just to buy or sell, but also to have a coffee and chat with their neighbors. Shopping malls are trading places: goods are exchanged but also stories and feelings – big ones and small ones.

This is what interested Florian Thalhofer and Kolja Mensing in their second collaborative project (after 13terStock). Both authors spent one month inside a shopping mall in Bremen – they slept in a caravan on the shopping mall’s parking-lot. “Roland Center” was one of the first shopping malls built in Germany. It is a coincidence that both authors and the shopping mall were of exactly the same age.
Thalhofer and Mensing fell in love with the Roland Center and the wonderful people and their stories that make it a very special place. As every place anywhere is a very special place, if you take one month time to watch and listen.

13thShop was published as a book plus DVD-Rom by mairisch Verlag, Hamburg. You can buy it here.

{Initiated by Peter Schenk, translation by Sophie Zeitz}

 

www.13terShop.de