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Thom McAn Shoe Store, Dixie Square Mall, Harvey, illinois (now demolished): photo by Brian Ulrich (notifbutwhen), December 2008
The subject of this book is an illusion expressed by Schopenhauer in the following formula: to seize the essence of history, it suffices to compare Herodotus and the morning newspaper. What is expressed here is a feeling of vertigo characteristic of the nineteenth century's conception of history. It corresponds to a viewpoint according to which the course of the world is an endless series of facts congealed in the form of things. The characteristic residue of this conception is what has been called the "History of Civilization," which makes an inventory, point by point, of humanity's life forms and creations. The riches thus amassed in the aerarium of civilization henceforth appear as though identified for all time. This conception of history minimizes the fact that such riches owe not only their existence but their transmission to a constant effort of of society -- an effort, moreover, by which these riches are strangely altered. Our investigation proposes to show how, as a consequence of this reifying representation of civilization, the new forms of behavior and the new economically and technologically based creations that we owe to the nineteenth century enter the universe of a phantasmagoria. These creations undergo this "illumination" not only in a theoretical manner, by an ideological transposition, but also in the immediacy of their perceptible presence. They are manifest as phantasmagorias.
Walter Benjamin: from Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century: Exposé (1939), translated by Kevin McLaughlin, in The Arcades Project (Das Passagen-Werk), ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 1999
The innermost glowing cells of the city of light, the old diorama, nested in the arcades, one of which still bears the name Passage des Panoramas. It was, in the first moment, as though you had entered an aquarium. Along the wall of the great darkened hall, broken at intervals by narrow joints, it stretched like a ribbon of illuminated water behind glass. The play of colors among the deep-sea fauna cannot be more fiery. But what came to light were open-air, atmospheric wonders. Seraglios were painted on moonlit waters: bright nights in deserted parks loomed large.
Walter Benjamin: from Panorama,translated by Howard Eiland, in The Arcades Project (Das Passagen-Werk), ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 1999
Dixie Square. Inside the Turn-Style store. Thom McAn seen through portal at left: photo by css9450, 16 November 2008
Thom McAn Shoes located in Block D,Dixie Square Mall, Harvey, Illinois. photo by Mike Brown (Mickey B Photography), 27 January 2008
Dixie Square. Looking out from TurnStyle towards Thom McAn: photo by css9450, 16 November 2008
Dixie Square. Thom McAn's sign sags precariously: photo by css9450, 16 November 2008
Thom McAn sign, Dixie Square: photo by jonrev, 11 January 2009
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Thom McAn and Block D, Dixie Square Mall: photo by jonrev, 11 January 2009
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Today it's Thom McAn. Looking out from Thom McAn towards TurnStyle: photo by jonrev, 11 January 2009
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Thomas Has Left the Building: photo by jonrev, 11 January 2009
Thom McAn and Block D, Dixie Square Mall: photo by jonrev, 11 January 2009
Today it's Thom McAn. Looking out from Thom McAn towards TurnStyle: photo by jonrev, 11 January 2009
Thomas Has Left the Building: photo by jonrev, 11 January 2009
DSM TM. [Restored original Thom McAn sign from demolished Dixie Square Mall.]. Neon pending, the "T" is original to its installation in Block D: photo by jonrev, 30 August 2012