Abandoned places aren’t – usually – dumping grounds, even if we can think of them as our society’s dumps. In fact, we call rubbish everything that is built and used for a definite function and, once its function ends, is merciless dumped.
The “throwaway” definition, anyway, doesn’t fit with ease to a place. A structure is built and exploited, yet it can never be thrashed. The thrashing implies a movement or an action (as our mom told us to use the trash can), while the abandonment is everything but an action. Simply, beacus of its loss of usability, we don’t mind of its destiny and leave it to himself.
So, enormous structures, once capable of producing a unique noise, deep and gloomy, as a sum of a large series of other sounds, now are only full of silence. A silence that force us to speak quietly.
What was once color, enlightened with strong lights, is now sunk under a deep coat of dust, and a sign of our finger is not enough, to bring back a color that rust took away. The same rust that show the weakness of a structure built to resist forever, eating them till disruption. What was in a shape, is now wrapped with brambles that obstruct the sight.
And time, once causing a constant repetition of the same movements by its precise marking, is now frozen to the last page of a stuck calendar.
So, if you are frightened of getting your hands dirty, take a look at these flicks but don’t enter an abandoned place.
It’s only rubbish.
Gnech
We always liked abandoned places, or non-places that fit into H.Bey’s TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone) definition. There’s a lot of stuff on the internet about urban exploration, including the very good flickr group Penetration by the HYB guys.
Magazines like Infiltrations and e-zines (Jinx is one of the fattest) are sometimes really useful to find information and tips.
In Italy, we can give some mad props to the Stalker group fom Rome, that keeps up urban exploration as a form of art performance in this special kind of public space.
You can also find some nice websites about Rome’s tunnels (with a complete map of the underground!) and even a complete archive (archivio degli edifici abbandonati) listing a lot of abandoned buildings.
So, we decided to open a small gallery with our view on the abandoned buildings around us. As usual, everyone can contribute with his own best shots. Here’s the gallery: Fatbombers Demolitions!
In the first upload, we have some cool photos from an abandoned lunapark in Berlin (thanks to Dilan).
