Paper short abstract:

With their more or less identical ground plans and interchangeable elements of interior design motels are usually considered to be "non-places" beyond history and identity. In our paper we will show how these "non-places" are becoming stages of performative appropriations.

Paper long abstract:

Developed shortly after Ford had introduced the legendary T-model to the new US automobile market in 1908 the motel had long become the omnipresent form of travel accomodation in America. The creator of this innovation, architect Arthur Heinemann, had exactly the same idea about travel accomodation as Ford about building cars: Highest economic efficiency for a large proportion of the population at affordable prices through rational construction and ultimate standardization of work routines in "production". Especially with the big motel chains ground plans and elements of the interior are mostly identical and interchangeable. This standardization leads to the assumption that motels are "non-places", as defined by Mark Augé in his »Presumptions for an ethnology of loneliness« , criticized before him by the geographer Edward Relph as lacking in identity because »they not only look alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience«. In these non-places, however, there are acts of brief and perfomative appropriations and therefore a formation of cultural aspects, if you take a closer look at the phenomenon of the motel.

In our paper we would like to first of all go into the connection between the design of a place and performative appropriation and stage performance and to highlight the question of the interdependence of space and behavior. Our proceedings are based on participant observation and the study of literature.