vienna

elationship, 604 the ritual space being a performative space where
normal behaviour is turned upside down. Ritual space is oriented
towards basic human emotions, such as pain and pleasure, danger
and safety, welfare and misery. 605 The seasonal sale window
creates the topos for the death of the seasonal sale collection,
and the window display is a threshold in urban space. 606 Rituals
have a long tradition in all cultures, being transformable into
threshold spaces, especially on the threshold of the imagined
world and the real world. Having described the topos, we now
come to the sacrificial act. How has the blood sacrifice changed
in consumer society? Consumer society is defined by its relation
to consumption and not by previous relations such as religion
or agriculture. There is a power relation between production
and consumption. Social power relations create social tensions
and, in order to make the power relations stable, rituals have
been a way of articulating such tensions since the beginning
of humankind:
“Every domination must be bought back, redeemed. This was
formerly done through sacrificial death (feasts and other social
rites: but these are still forms of sacrifice).” 607
While Baudrillard further develops this idea in relation to
the power of capital and the simulation of power compensation,
Sennett puts the question into a different perspective and asks
why modern capitalism has not developed rituals of asymmetry:
“When ritual binds people together, Bourdieu more largely
observed, it does so by allowing them to ‘mutate’ material fact
into some expressive gesture which can be shared – and sustained.
An economic exchange is a short transaction – the new
institutional forms of capitalism are particularly short-term. By
contrast, a ritual exchange, particularly of this asymmetric sort,
creates a more prolonged relationship […] why doesn’t modern
capitalism generate them [as well]?” 608
According to Sennett the reason is that capitalism is based
604 There is a lack of discussion on how architecture or design can develop the quality of a topos in order to raise an associated
action. Schuh (2003:193) points out this relationship, but she does not respond to it in her book on the relation of
festivals and architecture.
605 Wiedenmann (1991:16). An interpretation of the performative space in performance studies is provided by Fischer-Lichte
(2004:187).
606 Sykora (2002:131).
607 Baudrillard (2004:42).
608 Sennett (2003:220-221).
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