Tiantian Luo

The mall is one of the most universal urban spaces. I explored Westfield in London's West End as a site to offer a critique of a theatrical architecture that uses light, visual culture and sound to conceal consumerism and manipulate visitors. A reflection of a modern lifestyle of entertainment and consumption, where people are often willing to enter the trap of illusions to pursue fleeting moments of pleasure in a repetitive life. The mall is just one of the many containers that carry the illusion. Transitory moments of consumerist satisfaction disappear and the process of pursuit is repeated.

Malls or advertisements, the consumer culture they represent, always present a flat and distorted picture of life, reappearing in facsimiles of malls that can be found in most cities, in most countries. In Mall, Mall, Mall, I use the printer as a metaphor for a patterned consumer life, with the still printed images seen throughout the film emphasise this sense of reproducibility. I try to present an unfamiliar, unrealistic mall so that the viewer can re-enter this familiar place and re-examine the modern life we live in.