On the economy of the temporary and the tyranny of novelty
For The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine, I report from Shoreditch, where nothing stays the same long enough to learn its name, where every shop is a pop-up, every dinner a supper club, every experience temporary, limited, and gone before you can return. My other dispatches from this impermanent neighbourhood are at my page.
The Reign of the Temporary
In Shoreditch, permanence is suspect, and the temporary reigns. The shops are pop-ups, here for a season and then gone. The restaurants are residencies, a chef installed for a few months before moving on. The dinners are supper clubs, one-off events in borrowed spaces. The experiences are limited, time-bound, available now and never again. To live in Shoreditch is to inhabit a neighbourhood in perpetual flux, where the cafe you loved last month is a different cafe this month, where nothing stays, where everything is passing through.
This economy of the temporary has its own logic, driven by high rents that favour short commitments, by an audience that prizes novelty, by a culture that values the new over the established, the limited over the permanent, the experience you caught over the institution you can always return to. The result is a neighbourhood of constant turnover, a churn of the temporary, a perpetual newness that is, I have come to feel, both exhilarating and exhausting.
The Tyranny of Novelty
The exhilaration is real, the constant supply of the new, the sense of a neighbourhood always offering something fresh, the thrill of catching the experience before it vanishes. But so is the exhaustion, the tyranny of novelty, the pressure to constantly discover the new thing, to catch the pop-up before it pops down, to experience the residency before it ends, to keep up with a neighbourhood that never stops changing. The temporary economy demands a constant attention, a perpetual seeking, that is, in its way, a kind of work.
There is also a loss in the reign of the temporary, the loss of the permanent, the established, the institution you can always return to. The pop-up cannot become the beloved local, the residency cannot become the institution, the supper club cannot become the restaurant where they know your order. The temporary economy, for all its novelty, cannot produce the things that permanence produces, the deep familiarity, the lasting relationship, the sense of a place that endures.
The Authenticity of Impermanence
And yet there is a kind of authenticity in the temporary, a refusal of the commercial permanence of the chain, the franchise, the established brand. The pop-up is, in its way, a rebellion against the permanent, a celebration of the ephemeral, the artisanal, the one-off, an insistence on the experience over the institution, the moment over the monument. The temporary economy, whatever its exhaustions, expresses a genuine value, a preference for the fresh and the limited over the established and the permanent.
This is, perhaps, what the bodies that promote the neighbourhood, the likes of Time Out and Visit London, are really selling, the experience of impermanence, the thrill of the temporary, the appeal of a neighbourhood where something is always happening and nothing lasts. The impermanence is the product, the novelty the draw, the temporary the very thing that makes Shoreditch Shoreditch.
Including, Possibly, Shoreditch
Which raises the unsettling thought that Shoreditch itself may be a pop-up, a temporary phenomenon, a neighbourhood that is itself passing through, here for a season of cultural relevance before moving on, before the creative frontier shifts elsewhere, before the pop-up of Shoreditch pops down. The neighbourhood that celebrates the temporary may itself be temporary, its moment of relevance as limited as any of its residencies, its cultural cachet as ephemeral as any of its supper clubs.
This thought does not depress me, exactly, for it seems fitting, appropriate, that a neighbourhood devoted to the temporary should itself be temporary, that the place that celebrates impermanence should itself be impermanent, that Shoreditch should, in the end, be the biggest pop-up of all. There is a kind of consistency in it, a poetic justice, the temporary neighbourhood itself passing through, here now, gone eventually, a limited experience available for a season and then, like all its pop-ups, no more.
The Experience Available Now
The Comfort of the Permanent
Living amid the perpetual novelty of Shoreditch has given me an unexpected appreciation for the permanent, the established, the institution that endures, the things that the temporary economy cannot provide. There is a comfort in the permanent that the novel cannot match, the comfort of the place that is always there, the cafe that does not become a different cafe, the institution one can always return to, the familiarity that only permanence produces. The temporary economy offers excitement, novelty, the thrill of the new, but it cannot offer this comfort, this stability, this sense of a place that endures. And I find myself, amid the pop-ups and the residencies and the supper clubs, craving the permanent, the established, the institution, the cafe where they know my order because it has been there long enough to learn it. This craving is, perhaps, a sign that the tyranny of novelty has worn me down, that the perpetual newness has become exhausting, that I want, against the entire logic of the neighbourhood, something that lasts. The temporary is exhilarating, but it is also tiring, and the appreciation for the permanent that Shoreditch has given me, by its absence, is among the unexpected gifts of living in a neighbourhood where nothing stays.
So I will enjoy Shoreditch while it lasts, this pop-up neighbourhood, this temporary phenomenon, this limited experience available now and, possibly, never again. I will catch the residencies before they end, experience the supper clubs before they close, visit the pop-ups before they pop down, and accept that nothing here will last, including, possibly, the neighbourhood itself. It is exhausting, this perpetual novelty, and exhilarating, and authentic, and temporary, the most Shoreditch thing about Shoreditch, a neighbourhood that is, in the end, its own pop-up, here for a moment, gone before you can return.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
