Getting Physical in the Field

[John McCreery]

Just read a amazing piece on "Place Hacking" on Savage Minds. A conversation between Adam Fish and "reformed archeologist" Bradley L. Garrett, it takes us through words and photographs into the world of urban exploration, a hobby whose enthusiasts "choose to spend their weekends and time off of work exploring landscapes [instead of] sitting in front of a television or drinking at the pub."  I am instantly reminded of the work of Harvard professor John R. Stilgoe, who has, for decades, been teaching classes in which assignments include such topics as locating the date and manufacturer of all the manhole covers in a neighborhood or tracing the routes of abandoned train lines. It also recalls a not-yet-implemented project that Ruth and I have often discussed, tracing the history of the stairways we use to climb up and down the hills of Yokohama. We know that many follow historic routes that date back to the Edo Period, when most travel in Japan was on foot. We also wonder, however, how, when, why and by who the decisions were made to install the concrete stairs we traverse on our hikes around the city. We would like to know more about these bits of modern history that are literally inscribed in the landscape.

Has anyone been doing this sort of thing in the cities where they reside?

[Francine Barone]

Thanks for sharing this, John. Apologies for the long delay in my reply.

Your project on concrete stairs sounds intriguing. I have not yet done anything on the scale or magnitude of Garrett’s urban exploration, but I spent considerable time in the field investigating public spaces (plazas, streets, marketplaces) and looking at their history. What used to be there before? How do memories of past function influence activities in the present? I always find it interesting how spaces can be seen as “empty and useless” for some – whether younger generations or non-locals – and yet be imbued with completely different meanings for others. The dynamics of attaching meaning to spaces and how these change over time are complex and can be difficult to dissect.

I was really impressed with Adam Fish's interview/conversation on Savage Minds. Urban Exploration clearly makes for intriguing visual ethnography, and this is probably the most 'hardcore' portrayal I've read. In milder terms, it's impossible to do urban anthropology without attention to the style, appearance and ambiance of buildings, monuments and other structures. All cities have parts that are utterly wrecked and this reads through in behavior and activity there (or a distinct lack of). Still, in studying cities, urban structures and landscapes can quickly become background rather than foreground. I therefore enjoyed this unapologetic approach to buildings, proving that attention to deserted places can tell us a lot about people even while – especially because – they are devoid of human activity.

Urban spelunking to the extent explored by Garrett is probably best relegated to underground specialists willing to take on the inherent risks to the self (both physically and by bending and breaking trespassing laws or circumventing 'breaking and entering'). As one of the comments on Savage Minds noted, not all aspects of this methodology would pass a standard IRB process; but it still makes for a truly unique and rich ethnography of place. It's urban activism turned inside-out, at once very personal, even professional, but wholly belligerent. The interviewee's investment in his own love of/identification with this area is striking and impressive, if at times a little disturbing (hiding, dodging security, frantic escapes, "psychotopological terrorism").

The connection to photography is clear. Like Garrett, I'm drawn to the subject of urban objects and landscapes in imagery. There's a great deal of this variety of photography of the web, most of it very artistic in a naturally "anti-nature" kind of way: rust, cables, gears, stairwells, angles, industrial textures and washed-out overlays. The connection between UrbEx and Flickr/online networking could use further exploration. The practice seems to sustain itself based on ego-centric performance for an online audience, and for profit as much as for any deep sense of romanticism like that which was also present in the interview. Pure exploration for individual fulfillment may be at heart, but there are other players in the game - Flickr, Google, buyers, sellers, tourists, urbanites, netizens, nerds.

Even those not devoted to extreme UrbEx are attracted to architecture which tells a story and Flickr lets virtually anyone with a camera and an internet connection document their lives and their cities as both urban playground and art piece. Specifically, derelict, destroyed structures are often depicted in a way that turns them into art, or, rather, that shows that they already were works of art that simply needed a gallery and patrons. Taking a photo of an old, disused building not only ‘hacks’ the place, but makes it a place (again).

As the interview also reveals, UrbEx is a great lens for deconstructing the motivations, extravagances and failures of capitalism. Broken down, deserted and rusted cities, graveyards of old factories and office complex wastelands are anti-cities; forgotten dreams never fulfilled. Architecture is deeply tied to the urban economy: some locations are kept pristine for tourists, businesses, shopping precincts, etc, while others are disused and drained of significance. While the latter are often relegated to under-used areas of the city like the outskirts or old industrial estates, in Spain I often saw such elements right in the centers of towns, in tourist hotspots, camouflaged behind permanent scaffolding.

Urban renewal seeks to resuscitate life by giving renewed meaning to old structures, sometimes (often) by leveling them and starting again. That the UrbEx movement rejects official attempts to define useful and unusable space, and instead lives a secret community life among these failed and forgotten sites, is poignant in itself. This blatant subversion is telling and makes it easy to understand how Garrett’s obsession was born. Seeking 'freedom' to explore hidden and forbidden urban locales challenges the nature of urbane space as especially civilized, organized, contained and defined by its boundaries. At the same time, challenging and subverting corporate 'control' over structures deemed no longer free for public use necessitates those same controls be in place. From all sides, it is a battle over order and disorder and the two are deceivingly subjective.

[paulrchalmers]

This reminds me a little bit of a comment which Carolyn Steele once made that she likes to start to trace the constuction of a city as a food-system object by getting a map or a list of street names and mapping out the obvious 'Mill Lane' 'Frying Pan Alley' 'Fishmarket' and so on, then digging a bit deeper and going to see what followed on from the old uses. 

Just tried google for an example - http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=37597

 

As to making a non-place a place, once when I lived in Sheffield I decided to see if I could determine the highest building in the city - the edge is all hills, and a residential area with no obvious high building-contenders. My vague intention was to ask the occupants if they realised they were the highest, and maybe see the view from their attic window. When I came to the terrace house in the middle of a street which I thought would be the one, however, there was already an incongruous white pole with an ornate tip, such as you might see as a high point marker on a peak - stuck on the roof of the house. Nothing was indicated at ground level. 

Someone else had evidently thought to similarly commemorate this obscure honour - it was 'already a place' ! I wish I had followed on from this to find out the history of who, and when, but that day no-one was home.