Urbex

This chapter considers sites like Pripyat, in Chernobyl, as zones of alternative practice, especially in terms of urban exploration. At the same time, it offers a critique of such activities as a form of adventure tourism, contrasting the transformative potential of urban ruination against the commodification of the liminal.

The proliferation in recent years of photography of urban ruins has proven polarizing: on the one hand, urbex photographers claim the status of art for their work; on the other hand, critics and members of local communities consider such photographs to be voyeuristic and exploitative. Hence the term, “ruin porn.” This dissertation draws together insights from art history, philosophical aesthetics, and theological aesthetics to frame photographs of post-industrial ruins as artistic expressions of the sensory experience of dereliction in the built environment. Using a theological construct of “significant human experience,” this dissertation demonstrates that photographs of modern ruins which communicate such should not be dismissed as “ruin porn,” but merit serious consideration as works of art.

(Dissertation with images redacted for publication on ProQuest. Please contact me if you would like the version with the photos for your own personal use. -- Elaine)

İnsan odaklı, hümanist, bir fiziksel ve sosyal çevrede, “adil, demokratik ve katılımcı” bir çerçevede yaşama hakkına duyulan gereksinimle, yani “kent hakkı” ile ilgili sorunlar, yeni toplumsal hareketlerde değinilen başlıca sorunlardır. Türkçe’ye Kent Kaşifleri (urban explorers, UrbEx, UE) olarak çevirebileceğimiz gruplar, özel mülk (terkedilmiş konutlar) ya da kamusal kullanıma açık olmayan mekanlara (hastaneler, kentlerin altyapı ve metro ağları, şantiyeler) kent haklarının kısıtlanmasını eleştirmek amacıyla izinsiz girerek bu mekanları incelerler. Bu ve benzeri toplumsal hareketler  organize olmak için geçmişteki toplumsal hareketlerden alışkın olduğumuz kamusal alanın legal siyasi ve sivil kanallarından yararlanmak yerine yeni medya ortamını tercih etmektedirler. Yeni medya, iletişim ve toplumsal duyarlılık oluşturma amacıyla kullanılan bir araç olduğu gibi bireysel düşünceleri ifade etme, tartışma, ikna etme ve uzlaşma gibi derinlik gerektiren kamusal işlevlerin gerçekleştirildiği kamusal alan , örgütlenme platformu ve kolektif eylem dağarcığıdır. Bu çalışma, yeni medyanın günümüz toplumsal hareketlerinin iletişim, örgütlenme ve eylem alanlarındaki önemini, Kent Kaşifleri örneği üzerinden tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır. Kent Kaşifleri, hem fiziksel mekandaki pratik biçimleri (recreational trespass, inflitration, place hacking) hem de yeni medyanın sanal mekanındaki etkinlikleri ile ele alınmıştır. 
This study discusses the impact of new media in forms of communication, organization and collective action of today's social movements through the example of Urban Explorers. Urban Explorers have been analyzed  in terms of both physical spatial practices (recreational trespass, infiltration, place hacking) and the activities in the virtual space of new media.

Rarely solicited, and even less rarely welcomed in retrospect, there are fewer aspects of our built environment more contentious than graffiti. The occurrence of graffiti more often than not carries with it well-rehearsed attitudes towards both the art and the artist from the majority of the public and heritage sector alike. We seek to challenge this stance through unsettling traditional approaches to the use of photography in the archaeological recording of the built environment.
Our chapter focuses on two contrasting case studies in Scotland – Scalan, which is a nineteenth-century farm and Catholic seminary in the Cairngorms, and Pollphail, which is a 1970s oil workers village on the west coast of Argyll. We take stock of past recording techniques employed by archaeologists at these sites, in order to explore how new approaches to archaeological photography might be developed. The case studies form part of ongoing efforts to address graffiti art as a largely unrecognized form of cultural heritage in Scotland

In the early two thousand, URBEX, Urban Exploration of abandoned places began to spread across different parts of Spain. URBEX explores ruinous places not to rape them or to vandalize them but to photograph them. The practice itself results in an amazing creation: many photo files looking to be shared and exchanged by related to the beauty of these places. Thus, numerous web pages have proliferated to show these places.
In these webs, Industry Ruins have an important place because Spain is one of many Western countries that have suffered deindustrialization from the seventies. Then I propose to analyze the actual practice of urban exploration through one of his most famous website in Spain, www.territorioabandonado.org.
Exploring abandoned places is a nostalgia exercise? Restorative nostalgia or Reflective nostalgia? A reflection on these issues will discover new perspectives and approaches to these industrial landscapes.

L'exploration urbaine – ou Urbex – est une pratique de plus en plus connue du public étant donné sa médiatisation croissante notamment sur les réseaux sociaux, en particulier avec l'important nombre de photographies traitant du sujet, ce qui a donné lieu à l'émergence d'un registre photographique à proprement parler (la photographie d'Urbex). Par conséquent, il n'est pas surprenant de constater un intérêt grandissant porté sur la discipline. Le nombre de personnes pratiquant l'Urbex augmente, les sites et pages dédiés au sujet sur Internet également de façon proportionnelle. Il est donc tout naturel qu'une certaine demande commence à exister quant à l'accès à ce type de contenu, mais aussi à la pratique de l'exploration urbaine. Désormais, nous pouvons commencer à voir apparaître l'organisation d'explorations en groupes – qui proposent un « circuit » de lieux abandonnés à explorer et qui permettent de mettre en relation des inconnus pour participer à une exploration commune-. Par ailleurs, le terme « exploration urbaine » devient de plus en plus à la mode : il est employé de façon récurrente pour définir une nouvelle manière de visiter certaines villes. Mais quelle est la différence par rapport à une visite guidée d'une ville « classique » ? Et qu'est-ce qui suscite l'intérêt pour cette nouvelle façon de visiter ?

A l’apparition du goût pour la ruine, c’est l’objet antique qui frappe l’imagination. Les tambours de colonnes effondrées ramènent le spectateur plusieurs siècles en arrière. La beauté frissonnante des cadavres de pierre évoque un âge d’or perdu qui sert de modèle. Plus tard, les romantiques entretiennent cette fascination ambivalente pour les monuments éventrés, moins pour nourrir les utopies que pour jouer avec les limites de la beauté et de la laideur. Si une grande partie de la littérature contemporaine perpétue cet amour de la ruine apprivoisée, les industries du jeu vidéo et du cinéma nous saturent d’images de villes détruites dans des convulsions de fin du monde. La ruine n’est plus un objet inerte, elle se fabrique sous nos yeux. Elle n’est plus l’engrais pour le monde à venir mais le spectacle sans cesse renouvelé de notre fin. Dans une complaisance nihiliste d’adolescent attardé, l’image de la ville agonisante est devenue un produit. On ne fera pas un lien direct entre cet univers visuel et la production contemporaine. On cherchera plutôt en quoi ce nouvel âge de la ruine nous renseigne sur notre expérience de la ville post-moderne, en quoi cette vision toujours renouvelée de la fin de l’Histoire confère à des bâtiments d’une laideur commune la beauté étrange d’un freak.

This paper discusses the role of encounters with the past in the practice of urban exploration through ethnographic research undertaken with communities of urban explorers. Urban exploration is an activity intimately connected with places that have largely reached the end of their capitalist use-life. In this paper I argue that the practice enticingly complicates understandings of places by unveiling unexpected material traces and immaterial affordances that build resilient personal attachments where the `present' tangibly intersects with the `past'. In the process urban exploration exposes possibilities
for a cultural use-life of abandoned buildings beyond the event of abandonment, with or without formal historical interpretation.

The way that humanity both inhabits and views its surroundings directly influences individual and collective thoughts and emotions. Yet in a society that is constantly over-stimulated, taking in the surroundings becomes secondary to consumerism, and the distractions inherent within the spectacle. The spectacle, according to Guy Debord and the European revolutionary organisation Situationist International (SI), diverted the populace from the reality that surrounds it, and the SI deemed themselves the correct ones to re-envision reality. Fifty years after the 1968 Paris riots, the Situationists no longer exist, but new groups have risen from their ashes to explore and view the world in new ways, groups such as those involved in Urban Exploration (UrbEx). UrbEx involves small, often self-guided groups that investigate the ghosts of modernity, and the detritus of capital that remains in the wake of the spectacle. Utilising the Situationist International’s concept of the dérive, the ideas that fuel urban exploration, and conspiracist ideologies, this article explores the urban world viewed through psychogeography; those who seek the new sacred in a gnostic quest to gain a greater insight into what lurks in the shadows of the myth of modernity.

This chapter considers sites like Pripyat, in Chernobyl, as zones of alternative practice, especially in terms of urban exploration. At the same time, it offers a critique of such activities as a form of adventure tourism, contrasting the transformative potential of urban ruination against the commodification of the liminal.

Urban exploration or “urbex” are terms used to loosely describe the exploration of man-made structures, particularly those that are abandoned, “off limits”, or hidden from the public eye. Although people might at first assume that urban exploration is a marginal and strictly deviant activity, with the rise of many forums and blogs it appears to have become recognizable as an increasingly popular 21st-century leisure pursuit. Alongside the websites that have emerged, urban exploration has also become more widely discussed through several autobiographical and monographic pieces of literature. In particular, the autobiographical account of urban exploration by Garrett (2013a) has gained much attention and it perhaps offers the most comprehensive interpretation of this leisure activity written to date.

L’exploration urbaine – ou « urbex », de l’Anglais "urban exploration" – désigne le fait d’arpenter un espace post-industriel in situ, en particulier ses composantes cachées, temporaires ou délaissées. Que sont ces lieux ou phases, avant d’être vouées à l’usage humain, après avoir survécu à ce qui était prévu, ou simultanément et à côté et de leurs fonctions anthropiques ? Qu’y découvrons-nous, et que nous évoquent-elles ?

À travers les notions de projection, de perspective et d'écologie étendue, ainsi que de nombreuses références artistiques, cet article développe une proposition concernant la pratique et l'interprétation de l'exploration urbaine. Dans le contexte de l'Anthropocène, celle-ci peut être conçue et vécue comme expérience projective et prospective singulière.

Intensification of agriculture and land consolidation policy induced the removal of most natural features from farmland, reducing the habitat of many wild species. Abandoned WWII bunkers, unaffected by land consolidation, are a potential shelter for wildlife and could be used as burrows by carnivores such as European badgers and red foxes.
We explored 182 abandoned bunkers in a farmland area in eastern France in summer 2016. Bunkers were located in crops, forests, or groves. Over a three-month period, signs of presence, the number and type of burrows inside the bunkers and in their immediate vicinity were noted. Environmental variables were obtained using GIS, and binomial models were created to reveal parameters influencing bunker use by badgers and foxes. The degree of bunkers burrowing was used as a co-variable. Twenty-one groves without bunkers were also studied in order to estimate the added value of bunkers in groves.
Badger and fox tracks were found on 34% of the sites, and burrows on 24% of them with similar rates for badgers and foxes. Animals used partially buried bunkers more than underground or overground bunkers. The sizes of annual crops and urban areas around the bunker were positively correlated with bunker use. The presence of a bunker in groves was positively correlated with the presence of burrows in groves.

当代中国城市废墟的研究网络 This concept note aims to build an international research group of scholars, artists, and urban explorers focusing on ruins and ruination processes in urban China. Urban ruins constitute a ubiquitous architectural feature in contemporary China: from the rubble of urban demolition operations to the empty newly-built ghost towns, from industrial wastelands to forgotten historical buildings falling in disrepair, from abandoned theme parks to the slow decline of villages emptying as younger generations move to cities. The familiar strangeness of such ruined landscapes deserves a more thorough study. They operate a critical understanding of urban development by highlighting economic, ecological, and social crises.

This diploma thesis deals with the urban phenomenon known as urban exploration which has been studied in the teritory of Bratislava metropolis. The phenomenon was theoretically framed by the classical flâneurism concept and Walter Benjamin’s urban acheology concept. Concept of foreigner by Georg Simmel and Concept of bricolage by Claude Lévi-Strauss has been used also. The aim of this study was to describe how urban explorers understand, define and record the explored urban environment and also how they shape relationship to specific spaces of the city and city areas. Simultaneously there was an attempt to discover if it is possible to define urban explorers as „postmodern flâneurs“. The crucial part of this thesis consist of an analysis of ethnographic interviews with urbexers from Bratislava. Method of analysis was inspired by grounded theory with focus on extending of the original concept of flâneurism by adding new dimensions characteristic for urban exploration, p.e. esthetic dimension, self-identification and perception of public and private space in the metropolis. The thesis shows that the practice of urban exploration leads to the development of urban awareness, reimagination and reinvisioning of the postmodern metropolis.

Barcelona Showdown es una publicación coordinada por el colectivo Blood & Madness y lanzada junto al apoyo financiero de la escena suburbana internacional a través de un exitoso crowdfunding. Su objetivo era sencillo, pero desafiante: afianzar la valía cultural y subcultural del graffiti en el metro de Barcelona.

Guiado por la intensa fotografía documental de Mark Madness, Barcelona Showdown explora la historia del graffiti local a través del análisis subcultural de Jaume Gómez, un discurso que se enriquece con las brillantes ilustraciones de Alejandro Alonso y la potente documentación fotográfica cedida por los escritores de Barcelona. Con todo ello, el diseñador Jaume Ricart ha transformado Barcelona Showdown en un objeto editorial único, planificado para cumplir fielmente con otra de sus grandes premisas: vertebrar la microhistoria local con la tradición del graffiti contemporáneo.

Contrary to the belief that concrete ethical procedures and risk assessments can be easily established and followed in the field, this article suggests that our responsibility to ‘Others’ is a complex task that sometimes requires an individual-based moral responsibility towards ‘an-Other’. It will be argued, following the important work of Jacques Derrida, that it is possible for researchers to be moral while being immoral and responsible while being irresponsible. Using an example from my own fieldwork that looked at the phenomenon of urban exploration (The term urban exploration, also referred to as ‘urbex’, ‘recreational trespass’, ‘place hacking’ and ‘urban infiltration’, is used to describe the activity of exploring human-made structures and environments, particularly those that are abandoned or hidden from public view), which entailed ‘exploring’ alongside fellow urbexers as evidence, the article will go on to unpack the idea that when researching certain social spaces, in this instance heterotopic social spaces, our dependence on generalised ethics must be sacrificed to understand the ways of thinking of ‘Others’ which would otherwise go unnoticed or ignored. In other words, what will be suggested is that to understand forms of leisure that may seem deviant’ or ‘abnormal’, binary opposites, such as good and evil, must be ‘deconstructed’ so there are no good and evil characters. Instead, there are only characters and their varied collectively individual interpretations of existence. After all, present modernity is becoming much more fluid, idiosyncratic and ambiguous, so it should be expected that différance is at the heart of twenty-first century leisure and that exploring it will reveal much more about our increasingly fragmented world.