We are surrounded by empty buildings, the result of time moving by while bricks and mortar stand still, slowly decaying and returning to the ground. The memories of past social policy and architectural ventures left to rot without attention being paid to what we can learn from their histories or derive from their current state.
Every pavement, every brick, every hedgerow is owned by somebody: symptomatic of a society so heavily governed by economics. It is strange to think that everywhere we tread is in some sense private property. Everywhere we go, there is somebody who will have an excuse for moving us on.
The urban exploration movement grew out of many things: a desire to look into the past, to see what nobody else wishes to see, the love of adrenaline. Popular explores include cranes, Victorian asylums, cinemas and old industrial sites. It is a pursuit that is open to everyone yet quite secretive and closed in certain quarters. Little is needed in order to partake in it: a camera, a disregard for the exact letter of the law and a little common sense. When taken to another level then suddenly the expertise needed to traverse razor wire or the climbing equipment needed to scramble up cooling towers comes into play.
Despite how it may seem, there are rules governing this outwardly lawless-seeming activity, as the motto, "take only photographs, leave only footprints" suggests. Urban Explorers have been known to call the fire brigade upon discovering that the arsonists have recently been at work.
It can be easy to pigeonhole such an activity with things like graffiti but this is to do it a disservice. There is the same adrenaline rush and loose use of the term, "art for art's sake" but it addresses the question of ownership from a different angle. Whereas graffiti artists claim back shared urban space with the use of their tag, urban exploration serves to question the purpose of public space that has fallen out of use as well as the weight we place on history. It shares similarities with squatting but carries none of the connotations of direct action and approaches the question of re-use with a much lighter touch.
Urban Exploration joins its place amongst the many activities that have sprung up as urban past-times. Skateboarding, parkour; easily seen merely as sport, subversive activites or merely ways to kill time. When examined as a whole, what springs up instead is a discourse about how people interact with urban space: an environment which is evolutionarily alien, at times oppressive, at times a playground. Cities are built around the idea that one can engineer movement, and in course the very act of living. Circuits of resistence and circumvention are only to be expected, urgently necessary some might say.
A counterbalance is required in order to keep things in check. A fast-paced and pre-mapped route through life is provided as a blueprint for all: childhood, school, adolescense, further education, work, retirement, old age, death. Outside of holidays and weekends, where is the space for just being alive? There is always an undercurrent of thought suggesting that there must be more to life than this. For some this grows into charity work, graffiti, anarchistic direct action, terrorism. Something to throw an echo back at the enforced ethos of life. Subversion, through gentle examination or direct action is what keeps some people sane in an insane world while driving others to distraction. Something to inject a little colour into the proceedings.
Every pavement, every brick, every hedgerow is owned by somebody: symptomatic of a society so heavily governed by economics. It is strange to think that everywhere we tread is in some sense private property. Everywhere we go, there is somebody who will have an excuse for moving us on.
The urban exploration movement grew out of many things: a desire to look into the past, to see what nobody else wishes to see, the love of adrenaline. Popular explores include cranes, Victorian asylums, cinemas and old industrial sites. It is a pursuit that is open to everyone yet quite secretive and closed in certain quarters. Little is needed in order to partake in it: a camera, a disregard for the exact letter of the law and a little common sense. When taken to another level then suddenly the expertise needed to traverse razor wire or the climbing equipment needed to scramble up cooling towers comes into play.
Despite how it may seem, there are rules governing this outwardly lawless-seeming activity, as the motto, "take only photographs, leave only footprints" suggests. Urban Explorers have been known to call the fire brigade upon discovering that the arsonists have recently been at work.
It can be easy to pigeonhole such an activity with things like graffiti but this is to do it a disservice. There is the same adrenaline rush and loose use of the term, "art for art's sake" but it addresses the question of ownership from a different angle. Whereas graffiti artists claim back shared urban space with the use of their tag, urban exploration serves to question the purpose of public space that has fallen out of use as well as the weight we place on history. It shares similarities with squatting but carries none of the connotations of direct action and approaches the question of re-use with a much lighter touch.
Urban Exploration joins its place amongst the many activities that have sprung up as urban past-times. Skateboarding, parkour; easily seen merely as sport, subversive activites or merely ways to kill time. When examined as a whole, what springs up instead is a discourse about how people interact with urban space: an environment which is evolutionarily alien, at times oppressive, at times a playground. Cities are built around the idea that one can engineer movement, and in course the very act of living. Circuits of resistence and circumvention are only to be expected, urgently necessary some might say.
A counterbalance is required in order to keep things in check. A fast-paced and pre-mapped route through life is provided as a blueprint for all: childhood, school, adolescense, further education, work, retirement, old age, death. Outside of holidays and weekends, where is the space for just being alive? There is always an undercurrent of thought suggesting that there must be more to life than this. For some this grows into charity work, graffiti, anarchistic direct action, terrorism. Something to throw an echo back at the enforced ethos of life. Subversion, through gentle examination or direct action is what keeps some people sane in an insane world while driving others to distraction. Something to inject a little colour into the proceedings.
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