URBAN ABANDONMENT IN THE OUTPOSTS, WHERE EMPTY ROOMS SIT SILENTLY, ENVELOPED IN DECAY AND DARKNESS, NO CURE FOLLOWS AN EXPERIENCED URBAN EXPLORER INTO THE HEART OF THE ABANDONED. THERE SLEEPS THE MEMORIES OF A THOUSAND NAMES, FACES AND SOULS NOW COVERED IN THE UNMISTAKABLE HIEROGLYPHS OF A MODERN WORLD. Words: Troy Proudfoot / Photography: Lyle Radford
profile A cold wind whistles through a crack in the boarded-up window of the old house now abandoned and forever waiting out the years. It was once a place where the laughter and cries of children echoed throughout the halls, but now it stands silent and empty. That emptiness is briefly broken by the presence of a human being entering the sacred site. Standing precariously on the rotting wood beneath her feet, Bianca listens to the house breathing while her eyes grow used to the darkness. The house has become a shrine to the long-lost souls now forgotten and faded like the peeling wallpaper. She studies the markings left behind by vandals, street kids and artists with a desire to deface or reinvigorate an abandoned interior. It’s a moment etched in her mind’s eye. Bianca is young, intelligent and pragmatic. She possesses an otherworldly-old-soul sort of a quality with an appreciation for history, architecture and all things abandoned. There’s a Facebook page and a documentary dedicated to her fascination with urban exploration. Based in Brisbane, Bianca is a unique and interesting post-modern thinker with an eye for detail and classic irreverence. These disused outposts are a place for her to escape, to immerse herself in the memories and the echoes of bygone eras. Speaking about the ideology behind her Facebook page, Bianca touches on the subject of the page becoming her ‘own worst enemy’. “The Abandoned Brisbane page was started to basically make urbex more accessible to people who weren’t part of any organised groups,” she explains. “There are obviously people watching the page with different motives, and as more people become aware of a location it does tend to deteriorate. “I’m reluctant to revisit anywhere I know had valuables or antiques inside, and have now stopped posting external photos of those places, which is disappointing because I’m just as interested in the architectural aspect as I am about what’s inside.”
THE ABANDONED BRISBANE PAGE WAS STARTED TO BASICALLY MAKE URBEX MORE ACCESSIBLE TO PEOPLE WHO WEREN’T PART OF ANY ORGANISED GROUPS. THERE ARE OBVIOUSLY PEOPLE WATCHING THE PAGE WITH DIFFERENT MOTIVES, AND AS MORE PEOPLE BECOME AWARE OF A LOCATION IT DOES TEND TO DETERIORATE.
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I DON’T DOCUMENT WHEN A PLACE HAS BEEN TRASHED BECAUSE I SOMETIMES FEEL SEMIRESPONSIBLE AND WOULD PREFER THE IMAGES TO REFLECT HOW I FOUND IT INITIALLY.
What drives someone to express themselves through the desecration of another’s property is a fair question to ask, but therein lies the quandary around what is art and what is vandalism. These abandoned wastelands and shrines are ripe for the picking and in the eyes of the creator it’s a blank canvas waiting to be filled with expressive notions of egocentric entitlement, paranoia-induced conspiracy theories or wildly misunderstood abandonment. “I don’t document when a place has been trashed because I sometimes feel semi-responsible and would prefer the images to reflect how I found it initially,” Bianca tells me, reflecting on the popularity of her Facebook page and the subsequent butterfly effect. Bianca’s journey through long-forgotten sites is perfectly captured in her documentary Abandoned Brisbane. The viewer literally follows Bianca in a point-of-view style as she creeps through incinerated and dilapidated interiors, sporadically taking time out to smoke a cigarette while looking directly into the camera and describing the feeling of being an uninvited guest with an appreciation and respect for the tragically abandoned. “I have explored with other people who feel compelled to take a souvenir from each place they visit, but I don’t like to take
things and it’s far less stressful being able to walk out of a place without any stolen property on you,” she says. A recent trip to Japan saw Bianca exploring a wonderland of forgotten sites that she had been anxiously waiting to visit for some time. She describes Japan as a “giant abandoned playground”. Evading security guards, being chased by a pack of wild dogs and camping under the stars were all par for the course. Bianca finally got to see some of the locations featured in the first urbex book she ever bought four years prior. Creative and expressive in her own right, Bianca was able to immerse herself in the elegance of Japan’s history. The Japan trip was a collaborative effort intended for a documentary. Time will only tell if and when another documentary or artistic observation will emanate from a very intriguing and enlightened individual and her fascination with urban abandonment. The Abandoned Brisbane documentary can be found on YouTube, and photographs and information can be found on the Facebook site ‘Abandoned Brisbane (Urban Exploration)’. www.facebook.com/AbandonedBrisbane