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138 Consuming Media

within a twenty-four hour cycle. There is no fundamental contradiction between
linear and cyclical time.
Routinization often gives day-to-day practices a mundane or even dull quality.
This is in stark contrast to when historical time repeats itself, whether in the form of
nostalgia, ceremonials or regular outbreaks of war. The comprehension of historical
time is to a large extent a product of rehearsal. This is manifested by the celebrations
of historical jubilees, memorials, festivals and anniversaries that stabilize collective
memory, but also by a more general ‘thirst for the past’ in contemporary modernity,
for instance in medieval role-playing games or historical theme parks for tourism,
which offer fictionalized ways to relive the past. ‘History’ has become a profitable
target of the so-called experience economy in recent years, as a strategy to ‘enrich’ and
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‘theme’ the experiences that it offers its customers. This is not a brand-new trait in
the social sphere of consumption, but it is today unfolded in more conscious and
organized ways than before.
One example is the architectural construction of Solna Centre, which according to
its architect was partly inspired by the nineteenth-century arcades in Paris. The
arcade building style, once developed from ancient prototypes to represent moder-
nity, have nowadays turned into references for historical places of consumption, used
as retrospective anchorage in department stores and shopping centres all over the
world. ‘The first structures made of iron served transitory purposes: covered markets,
railroad stations, exhibitions,’ noted Benjamin. ‘What was once functional and tran-
sitory, however, begins today, at an altered tempo, to seem formal and stable.’ 30 By
such historical references, a shopping centre inscribes itself in a historical context. But
this way to ‘cite history’ also tears the historical object ‘from its context’, as Benjamin
puts it. 31 As mentioned in Chapter 1, these citations rewrite local history within an
overall frame of popular culture and nostalgia. In Solna this even includes an histor-
ical relocalization of the city’s well-known soccer team, AIK, which has its own
supporter shop in the shopping centre and whose legendary players are depicted in
its wall paintings. Originally founded in the middle of Stockholm in 1891 and
considered a Stockholm team for a long time, the club relocalized itself in 1937 when
the newly built Råsunda stadium in Solna became its home field. This relocalization,
which will be further discussed in the next chapter, is buried in the images of local
history that flash by in the centre and its supporter shop, according to an account of
AIK as always having been a local team. This reconstruction of local history shows
how consumptive practices contribute to reconstruct the experience of time and
history, embedded in larger social, cultural and political contexts. It is a matter of
reconstruction rather than construction, since there remain bounds to pre-existing,
sometimes conflicting, historical narratives.
One basic element in the construction of consumption time is marked by the
opening and closing hours of the shopping centre. The city centre, on the other
hand, never ‘closes’, although individual shops and other activities all over town have
varying opening hours. The fixed opening times in Solna Centre therefore install a
strong temporal regime in the city, dividing concrete time into two distinct layers,