Post-industrial Meccas and the phenomenon of urban exploration.

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POST-INDUSTRIAL MECCAS AND THE PHENOMENON OF URBAN EXPLORATION:                        Joseph Bloor

December 31st 1997 Buffalo New York State U.S.A

The grand plans for a Paris Boulevard stretching between Buffalo Central Station and Buffalo City Hall failed, and for the last 25 years the Rail Terminal stands empty. Still as imposing as it’s nearest metaphysical neighbour, Grand Central in New York City, but a ghost of what it once must have been. Merciless scrap merchants and peddlers, together with the unwanted attention lavished by the vandals of a city in the midst of an industrial and economic post mortem have stripped the decaying monolith bare. The planned street stretches two miles out from the city centre and leads to an off axis asphalt plaza in front of the station. It is not a place we should be, even within the relative safety of an automobile. The only signs of life in the empty lots are the glowing oilcans, burning trash and warming a large but invisible homeless population. The street is deserted save for the shadows of a criminal element that are etched into the bare brick walls of abandoned townhouses and failing businesses.  The plaza itself has more potholes than ‘The Beetles’ “Blackburn Lancashire” featured in “Day in the Life”; upturned concrete flooring slabs and abandoned vehicles dotted like fireflies force the approach into a pitfall picturesque detour. The main building owes more to the builders of gothic arches than to the American Dream of the Skyscraper. The ticketing hall seems larger than that of Grand Central, maybe because it has been stripped of all but the most inaccessible of its fittings, and even then, some gravity defying feats have been pulled to remove the chandeliers from their privileged positions. Its raw brick surfaces, and the fact that it is currently occupied by three people (as opposed to the thirty thousand commuters and tourists that flood through its still functioning big brother every day) open the space into an agoraphobic’s nightmare. The four barrel vaults overhead intersect to form a Greek cross, the ends of the vaults are filled by semicircular arched windows, each containing roughly one hundred panes of glass, almost every pane has been smashed or fractured in a different way, The patina effect is one which forces me to search the floor for every stone and pebble used to create this chaotic and violent effect. The past echoes of its once bustling atmosphere and its present silence, are drowned out by the reverberating organ music playing over and over in my head. The network of pipes of a vast yet imaginary cathedral organ would not be out of place here. This abandoned hulk has stolen my breath, something essential to its condition has struck a chord within me, and although it is now lost as an infrastuctural terminus it fulfils another role as adventurous individuals and small groups explore its forgotten spaces and uncharted territories.

What had been an extremely powerful experience for me, and one that I thought was thoroughly individual, turns out to be one of the main reasons for the gradual appearance of a phenomenon. Understood by law enforcement agencies and security firms as trespassing, but known as Urban Exploration to a strikingly peripheral, global, and definitely ‘virtual’ community. The other reason for its now apparent visibility is that this community has utilised the Internet to revolutionise the circulation of information regarding the sites of exploration. A collective curiosity in the blank areas of the urban condition has been transformed from geographic fragmentation to highly linked virtual addresses. The web has helped to merge what had been isolated pockets of active Urban Exploration into a thriving worldwide subculture. In Australia the underground storm drains and sewers attract regular visitors. In Paris the famous catacombs receive similar attention, as intrepid characters go beyond the confines of the regular guided tours, disappearing into the tunnels and caverns alone to discover their forbidden depths. The American Southwest offers up  abandoned missile silos beneath the desert, dysfunctional remnants of the ‘Cold War’ awaiting a pioneering rapport. Within most declining industrial cities in the U.S.A., countless old buildings have been left behind and rotted by economic recession. These form a stock of ‘real’ estate passed over by the watchful eye of the city administrators but liberated by the wilful occupation by anonymous protagonists. The connection between Urban Exploration and the Internet goes beyond a means of publicly declaring a state of insurgence on the ruins of contemporary society. In fact some groups of explorers do operate in a guerrilla or paramilitary manner, with each structure seen as a key stronghold of a perceived enemy, and each mission as part of a coordinated battle campaign to reclaim the urban territory from the dominant ‘Authority’ whom it has fallen to. The similarities between the act of computer hacking and Urban Exploration, provide an insight into what drives this fanatical dedication. Both groups hold the belief that information longs to be free-whether its some obscure computer code or a glimpse at what is behind locked doors. Like hackers there is a desire for new experiences, for notches on a belt, and perhaps most of all, for inhabiting spaces they were never meant to occupy. The idea of the frontier is one of key importance, there are very few areas of the earth left uncharted, and it is unlikely that many people will have the chance to see these distant corners. However, there are large areas of the city that as far as the authorities are concerned are ‘out of bounds’, protected from trespassers. Subway tunnels, storm drains, abandoned buildings, unabandoned buildings and these provide an exotic realm to be discovered and documented.

It seems that the main interest lies in spaces at the periphery of normal experience, most of us have visited a city rooftop at some point in our lives, and I am certain that the overview of a familiar landscape, gives us a greater understanding of that particular condition. However day-to-day experience occurs within a pretty set stage of operation. Buildings at the extremities of their lifespan, either during construction or during demolition offer an added sense of danger that feeds the insatiable need for an adrenaline rush, but inhabited buildings also attract unauthorised visitors with a desire to infiltrate and go unnoticed. The urban explorer is determined to escape from the set pattern of inhabitation. Recent Accounts published by Jinx magazine through their website, Jinxmagazine.com document a visit to the roof of Grand Central Station, which culminated with the staking of a flag carrying the universal “danger” symbol on the statue of Mercury. Certainly we understand that Grand Central Station has a roof yet most people are happy with the experience viewing it from beneath. They are not prepared to risk a charge of trespassing, to  open closed doors and travel in freight elevators in order to experience a view that would certainly threaten the tourist traps of the Empire State Building, and World Trade Centres, if it were easily accessible. People rarely look up, and if they do (even in New York) they give no heed to someone scrambling over the statue of Mercury flag in hand. It is precisely this apathy towards the surrounding environment that urban explorers do not comprehend.

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The question of whether this activity holds any relevance to a discussion centring architecture needs to be addressed. Urban Exploration does not hold any artistic goals in its actions. It is an experiential activity, which while documenting its work does not propose the documents as any more than proof that these forbidden places exist and have been discovered. Parallels within the art world do however exist; The Work of Jane and Louise Wilson, in their video installations of Las Vegas Casinos. Rather than `documents of places that are physically cordoned off, the eerie quality of the work comes from ...

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