FORGOTTEN - Sad stories about objects

F O R G O T T E N .

Sad

stories

about

objects

12-2018/01-2019

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FORGOTTEN: Sad stories about objects Our beloved objects ---------------------------------- pag.2-11 Disposable ------------------------------------------- pag.12-19 Abandouned places ------------------------------------ pag.22-41 Ghost cities ----------------------------------------- pag.42-55 Ruin Lust -------------------------------------------- pag.51-59 Credits ---------------------------------------------- pag.60

emory of a good sweet child. Do you want it

OUR BELOVED OBJECTS

Photo by Ben Neale on Unsplash

2016-2017

I am a romantic and a dreamer. I see old buildings for what they were, for the life they gave to inanimate brick and stone that became a place to live. I sense grief for the lost dreams that lived there once and either died or moved away.

Whose fault was this? Are they a contagion for future broken lives? Are they ready to find new lives and hopes after a rehabilitation?

In this kind of photoshooting is common to bring an human object into the scene, with the aim of giving to the foto a sense of “empathy�. Chairs are one of the

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Chairs are one of the most popularsubject.

They are usually supposed to be comfortable for the human and their state of decay becomes a simbol for the inospitability of a certain place.

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Felipe Belluco

In t h i s k i n d o f phot o s h o o t i n g i s com m o n t o b r i n g an h u m a n o b j e c t int o t h e s c e n e , wit h t h e a i m o f gi v i n g t o t h e fot o a s e n s e o f “empathy�.

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Untold About all the untold words 10

In houses and apartments in Calcutta in 2002, Ms. Singh found herself taking pictures, as she had at Anand Bhavan, of rooms empty of people but filled with traces of them: an armchair awaiting the arrival of one family member, a desk chair vacated by another; a daybed where someone now dead had once napped.From Calcutta, she traveled to Boston for an artist’s residency

at the Gardner, a mock-Venetian palace built around 1900 as museum-home. She brought the pictures from Calcutta, and began doing in Boston what she had done there: evoking resident spirits through portraits of furniture. An 18th-century Italian chair, for example, facing a tiny tabletop Raphael “Pietà” had been set in

at the Gardner, a mock-Venetian palace built around 1900 as museum-home. She brought the pictures from Calcutta, and began doing in Boston what she had done there: evoking resident spirits through portraits of furniture. An 18th-century Italian chair, for example, facing a tiny tabletop Raphael “Pietà” had been set in 11

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DISPOSABLE

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Our beloved

Time 15

Objects of the past “What is particular in this kind of objects is that they are half alive” “I am able to be international because I am so rooted in India,” said the ultra-cosmopolitan Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister. And many contemporary Indian artists might well say the same. International they are, for sure, judging by visibility. A big traveling survey called “Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India” is at the Asia Society and the Queens Museum in New York this spring.

This summer, the Venice Biennale will have its first Indian pavilion. The Delhibased photographer Dayanita Singh, 44, in particular is getting around. She has work in “Edge of Desire” and at Sepia International in Chelsea, plus a solo exhibition, “Chairs,” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, a really beautiful one, subtly globalist and time traveling. As it happens, her pictures at the Gardner and at the Asia Society share a Nehru moment. In 2000, Ms. Singh made a series of photographs at Anand Bhavan, the Nehru family home in Allahabad, now a museum. With its displays of the political hero’s personal effects in domestic settings, it draws its share of tourists, though Ms. Singh paid little attention to them.

Instead, she focused on the objects preserved. Her shot of one of Nehru’s white jackets hanging in a cabinet is at the Asia Society; a picture of books in his spare, monkish library is at the Gardner.

Both photographs -- black-and-white, like all Ms. Singh’s work -- are reliquary still-lifes of a specific historical past.

Continue reading the main story But a third picture from the series, not in either show -- you’ll find it in her book, “Privacy,” published last year

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little attention to them.Instead, she focused on the objects preserved. Her shot of one of Nehru’s white jackets hanging in a cabinet is at the Asia Society; a picture of books in his spare, monkish library is at the Gardner. Both photographs black and white, like all Ms. Singh’s workare reliquary still-lifes of a specific historical past.

But a third picture from the series, not in either show -- you’ll find it in her book, “Privacy,” published last year by Steidl -- is quite different. In it, Indian tourists peer into one of Nehru’s rooms from behind a glass barrier. Ms. Singh shoots them from inside the display, from the perspective of Nehru’s ghost, you might say. And dressed in saris and T-shirts, they seem to be from another world, an in-thenow India, jostling for space and feeling the heat, in a frozen-time shrine. Place and time -- here and there, past and present are the poles of Ms. Singh’s work, although her early training was in the intensely present-directed field of photojournalism, which she studied in India and at the International Center of Photography in New York. While

still her 20’s she had assignments for international magazines and newspapers, including this one.

And one article, from The Times of London in 1989, turned into a long-term, career-altering project.

The article was about Indian eunuchs, who form a distinctive social class within the culture.

In researching the subject, she befriended a eunuch named Mona Ahmed, a bright, troubled, charismatic presence whose life she went on to photograph for 13 years. What resulted was the extraordinary book “Myself Mona Ahmed” (Scalo, 2001), a record of a personal past and present locked in conflict.

Ms. Singh’s interest in photojournalism gradually cooled as she realized that most Western publications were interested in only one India, an India of sensational catastrophes and human failures. And even as she produced significant reports on AIDS and child labor, she was aware that the India of economic privilege that she was born into was going undocumented in a period of radical transition. With no market for the story, she proceeded on her own. In 1992, she started making portraits of wealthy urbanites in their homes in New Delhi and elsewhere, beginning with family friends and branching out into a social sphere in which distinctions between “Western” and “Indian” are in an ever-shifting balance. This dynamic is apparent in the clothes her sitters wear saris and miniskirts turn up in the same picture but more tellingly in half-noticed details of interior décor, which range from colonial baroque to minimalist modern, with endless variations between.

In houses and apartments in Calcutta in 2002, Ms. Singh found herself taking pictures, as she had at Anand Bhavan, of rooms empty of people but filled with traces of them: an armchair awaiting the arrival of one family member, a desk chair vacated by another; a daybed where someone now dead had once napped.

From Calcutta, she traveled to Boston for an artist’s residency at the Gardner, a mock-Venetian palace built around 1900 as museum-home. She brought the pictures from Calcutta, and began doing in Boston what she had done there: evoking resident spirits through portraits of furniture. An 18th-century Italian chair, for example, facing a tiny tabletop Raphael “Pietà” had been set in place by Isabella Gardner herself nearly a century earlier and not been moved since. Her ardent, acquisitive gaze lingered there.

Ms. Singh was in and out of Boston a lot during this time, and took her camera with her. She photographed rooms wherever she went: first in South India, then in Venice, where she stayed at the home of Fausto Calderai, a furniture scholar who was cataloging the Gardner’s collection.

Finally, four years after the residency ended.

She wrapped up the project with the current exhibition.

It’s a solo show that is also a collaboration. Taking their cue from the 2002 photograph of the chair in front of the Raphael, Ms. Singh and Mr. Calderai have created arrangements of chairs throughout the museum. In the room that was Gardner’s salon, they’ve placed them in casual groupings to suggest a party just broken

armchair serves as a screen on which Ms. Singh’s photographs from Allahabad, Calcutta, Boston and Venice are projected.

The photographs themselves, hung in a special exhibition gallery, are the heart of the show.

What’s interesting about them is that it’s hard to tell at a glance when and where they were taken.

They look both old and new. They could be Western or Indian. As Nehru might have recognized, they are, in some sense, both, and the one because of the other.

La bellezza degli oggetti-ricordo che riempiono le mie valigie sta nel fatto che si trasformano in elementi a metà tra oggetti inanimati ed esseri viventi ”Keep quiet and keep down, this building is active,” says BryGuy, his pointed finger catching a flashlight behind him. “And no more flashlights.” Everything snaps to black. Between the clanks and buried explosions of the acreslong factory to our right, the only other sound is the percussion of footfalls along the dirt road on which we’re running. “There’s a guard up there, be careful,” BryGuy announces, heading deeper into knee-high grass. A hundred yards in front of us our target appears: two steel silos jutting stories-high on a flat, black field. BryGuy kneels at the crossroads, and in the shadow of a flickering streetlight whispers: “OK, that’s it. That’s where we’re going.”

Tonight’s event has so far been executed with militaristic precision, each member moving with the economy and alertness of a soldier on a dangerous reconnaissance mission. But this group isn’t wearing fatigues and night-vision

goggles; they’re in baggy shorts, untied shoes and black hoodies.

The triggers they’re flipping aren’t on guns, but on beat-up flea market flashlights. And this isn’t a war zone. It’s a weedy field in front of an abandoned sugar refinery along a rural road an hour south of San Luis Obispo. It’s Friday night at 11:30, and Central California’s Urban Explorer Meet has just begun.

What is an urban explorer? Urban exploration is the examination of off-limits or seldom seen parts of man-made structures. Unlike other adventurers, such as rock climbers or spelunkers, urban explorers shun the natural world in pursuit of more closely examining and understanding the inner workings of our constructed world, of seeing civic society in its real, raw, unpainted, unplastered and unprettied state. It’s internal city touring, but without guides, double-decker buses, maps or directions. It’s about going where people aren’t supposed to go.Indeed, a few kids trespassing in old buildings is nothing new. What makes urban exploration different is that it is not a few kids - it is tens of thousands of people of varying ages and professions. And it’s not just old buildings: It is subbasements, engine rooms, mine shafts, train tunnels, drains, cemeteries, hospitals, decommissioned ships, nuclear missile silos and more.

Urban exploration is a worldwide phenomenon with its own fanzines, conventions, culture, ethics, periodicals, books, movies, MTV specials and clubs from Russia to Australia, Canada to Chile. And it’s growing.

Text by Holland Cotter

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THE POETRY OF DECAY “Scars are stimuli for the mind. They raise questions, about memories and imaginations of a foregone past, and of potential futures.

They visualise the passage of time and the inevitability of collapse, reminding us of our own transience.�

Mark Minkajan

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Rusted cars near the Seneka lake

Lost

Paradise

December 18, 2013

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we are amused by

ABANDOUNED

PLACES

because

they represent a pure time

Franklin Park Theater, 1950, Boston

Hiroshi Suhimoto

Palace Theater, 1937, Gary

“I feel that I’m standing

l to witness

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I b

how

Everett Square Theater, 1970, Boston

’m in a ack to

look

at

this

very this

big

interesting position, where change, at this moment in history of human beings‌I want

story

of

humans ends.

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LuXurYsouiT

Hither let Luxury lead her loose-robed train; Here flutter Pride, on purple-painted wings : And from the moral prospect learn how vain The wish that sighs for sublunary thing

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Half buried there lie many a broken dust From the rent roof, and portico sublime.

bust, And obelisk, and urn, o’erthrown by Time; And many a cherub there descends in

o

Photos by

Alessio

di Leo Luxury

on

purple-painted wings :And from

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Melody of a collapse

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Gathered with my dearest of friends, I watched through my lens the destruction of a beloved eyesore they called the Capital Plaza Tower. A building which had been deemed unsafe and abandoned for years. When it was all over and I had gotten enough pictures of the dust completely changing the atmosphere of the town, we retreated into our old faithful coffee shop. I couldn’t stop flipping through my camera, zooming in and out of every detail, psyched at how good they turned out. I couldn’t wait to get home to edit all of them. I hadn’t been that excited for a set of shot since the eclipse .

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Doomed buildings Feeling the irresistible draw to crumbling buildings and abandoned places.

I began to tire of the monotony of the wilderness, which was lately so beautiful; ever the same reds and yellows and browns and bits of lingering green; ever the same burnt grass and purpling bushes and rocky hills; but never a human being except myself, and I am not company for two. When one grows lonesome beauty departs.

I abused the wilderness in its unchanged garb, and longed for the camp and the ugly black cook frying strips of bacon over the coals. Hunger will not be denied its complaints, though in my case they availed nothing. I wandered about until the spirit and the flesh rebelled sorely and called upon me for the relief which I had not to give. Both ankles were in a state of open mutiny; and I sat down upon the crest of a high hill to soothe them into temporary quiet.

I observed then a very marked change in the skies, real, and not due to the state of my mind.

The sun, as if satisfied with a halfday’s splendor, was withdrawing.

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withdrawing. Some clouds, dark purple streaks showing in them, hid the blue and made the skies sombre. All the bright color with which the wilderness had prinked and primped itself in the sunshine faded and became dull in this twilight afternoon. It needed no weather-wise prophet to guess quickly the meaning of thesechanges. In the mountains a whiff of snow sometimes comes very early,—now and then so early that it whitens the skirt of lingering autumn. The clouds and the misty air with the chilly damp in it betokened such an arrival. Once more I longed for our snug little valley, with the camp, half tent, half cabin, and the sight of the fat black cook frying strips of bacon over the glowing coals.

I had no fear of a heavy snow.

The season was too early, I thought, for anything more than a mere spatter of white. But snow, whether in large or small quantities, is wet and cold, and it was sufficient to be lost, without these new troubles. From the hill I thought I could see a valley far to the northeast, with the blue and silver waters of a brook or small river shining here and there through the foliage. I decided to make all haste toward it, for in these mountains human life seeks the valleys, and if I found food and shelter at all it would most likely be there. I took small account of the rough way, and almost ran over the stones and through the scrub. I was in some alarm, for which there was ample cause.

The clouds thickened, and

clothed the higher peaks. Yet I was cheered by my belief that in truth I had seen a valley of some extent; the patches of blue and silver water showed more plainly through the distant foliage, which looked greener than the withering leaves on the mountain, indicating a sheltered and warmer zone. Rising hope brought back some of my strength, and when I reached the summit of a new hill in the long rows of hills that thrust themselves before me as if to bar my way, I was ready to shout for gladness at the sight of smoke.

The smoke rose from the valley, merely a faint spiral of blue, slowly as cending, and melting so imperceptibly into the clouds that I could not tell where it ended. Yet there was never a more welcome sight to me than that little smoky wisp which told so plainly of man’s presence.I pushed on with new zeal, stumbled against a stone, and rose with an ankle that made bitter complaints. It was not a sprain, but it was unpleasantly near one, and I doubted my ability to walk with the cripple over so wicked a way to the valley.

I abused the cruelty of fate, which was but my own carelessness and haste, and then tried to think out the matter. My first impulse was to throw aside my gun and escape its weight; that led to my second, which was to fire it in the hope of attracting attention. I had plenty of cartridges. I discharged a bullet into the air. The echo was carried from hill-top to hill-top, until at last I heard it faintly speeding away through the distant. mountains.

If any one were near, such a report could not escape his ears; but the only answer was the snow, which began to fall as if my shot had been the signal for its coming.

The soft flakes descended gently, but they would soon put a sheet of white over all the ridges. Some melted on my face, and the damp chilled me. It was not a time to spare my crippled ankle. I limped on, firing my rifle a second, third, and fourth time. I could still see the spiral of smoke, a true beacon to me, though it was all but hid by the increasing clouds.

I fired the fifth time, and while the echo was yet travelling among the peaks I heard a faint and very distant halloo. I had no doubt that it was an answer to my shot, and, to be sure, I emptied a sixth cartridge into the air. Back came the far cry. Like the shot, it too was taken up by the echo: ridge repeated it to ridge, faint and far away, until I could[ not tell from what point of the compass the true sound had come. I was perplexed, but hopeful. I believed that help of some kind was near. I sat down on a rock and expended much ammunition. The snow was still coming down in the same gentle undecided way, but I was compelled to stop between shots and brush the damp, white patches off my clothing. Presently the answering halloo sounded very near me, and I ceased to fire, replying with a shout. Two large dogs scampered through the bushes, and, approaching me, began to bark as if they had brought game to bay. A strong voice ordered them

Much literature about the topic has been published, trying to explain why the ruin prompts such an instinctive responses in us that are filled with melancholia, nostalgia and imagination. voice ordered them to be quiet, and then the owner of dogs and voice came into view. with book and tablets, who, in the winter, wore a particular sort of warm gloves, that the sharpness of the weather might not occasion any interruption to my uncle’s studies: and for the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I recollect his once taking me to task for walking. ‘You need not,’ he said, ‘lose these hours.’

For he looked upon every hour as lost that was not given to study.

Through this extraordinary application he found time to compose the several treatises I have mentioned, besides one hundred and sixty volumes of extracts which he left me in his will, consisting of a kind of commonplace, written on both sides, in a very small hand, which renders the collection doubly voluminous. He used himself to tell us that when he was comptroller of the revenue in Spain, he could have sold these manuscripts to Largius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces ($16,000), and then the collection was not so extensive as now. When you

consider the books he has read, and the volumes he has written, are you not inclined to suspect that he never was engaged in public duties or was ever in the confidence of his prince? On the other hand, xvii when you are told how indefatigable he was in his studies, are you not inclined to wonder that he read and wrote no more than he did? For, on one side, what obstacles would not the business of a court throw in his way? and on the other, what might not such intense application effect? It amuses me when I hear myself called a studious man, who in comparison with him am the merest idler. But why do I mention myself, who am diverted from these pursuits by numberless affairs both public and private? Who among those whose whole lives are devoted to literary pursuits would not blush and feel himself the most confirmed of sluggards by the side of him? I see I have run out my letter farther than I had originally intended, which was only to let you know, as you asked me, what works he had left behind him. But I trust this.

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Demolition “After the explosion and the collpase of the old walls it was just dismay and total immobility.

The silent dust was completely changing the atmosphere of the town.”

For transacting business in, and then proceed to execute the orders he had received. As soon as he returned home, he gave what time was left to study.

After a short and light refreshment at noon, agreeably to the good old custom of our ancestors, he would frequently in the summer, if he was disengaged from business, lie down and bask in the sun; during which time some author was read to him, while he took notes and made extracts, for out of every book he read he made extracts; indeed it was a maxim of his, that ‘no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it.’

When this was over, he generally took a cold bath, then some slight refreshment and a little nap.

After this, as if it had been a new day, he studied till supper-time, when a book was again read to him, from which he would take down running notes. I remember once when his reader had mis-pronounced a word, one of my uncle’s friends at the table made him go back to where the 34

made him go back to where the word was and repeat it; upon which my uncle said to his friend, ‘You understood it, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said the other. Why then’ said he, ‘did you make him go over it again? We have lost more than ten lines by this interruption.’ Such an economist he was of time! In the summer he used to rise from supper by daylight, and in winter as soon as it was dark: a rule he observed as strictly as if it had xvi been a law of the state.

Such was his manner of life amid the bustle and turmoil of the town: but in the country his whole time was devoted to study, except only when in the bath. When I say in the bath I mean while he was in the water, for all the while he was being rubbed and wiped, he was employed either in hearing some book read to him or in dictating himself. In going about anywhere, as though he were disengaged from all other business, he applied his mind wholly to that single pursuit. Always by his side was a short-hand writer, with book and tablets, who, in

with book and tablets, who, in the winter, wore a particular sort of warm gloves, that the sharpness of the weather might not occasion any interruption to my uncle’s studies: and for the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I recollect his once taking me to task for walking.

‘You need not,’ he said, ‘lose these hours.’ For he looked upon every hour as lost that was not given to study. Through this extraordinary application he found time to compose the several treatises I have mentioned, besides one hundred and sixty volumes of extracts which he left me in his will, consisting of a kind of commonplace, written on both sides, in a very small hand, which renders the collection doubly voluminous.

He used himself to tell us that when he was comptroller of the revenue in Spain, he could have sold these manuscripts to Largius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces ($16,000), and then the collection was not so extensive as now. When you consider the books he has read, and the volumes he has written, are you not inclined to suspect that he never was engaged in public duties or was ever in the confidence of his prince? On the other hand, xvii when you are told how indefatigable he was in his studies, are you not inclined to wonder that he read and wrote no more than he did? For, on one side, what obstacles would not the business of a court throw in his way? and on the other, what might not such intense application effect? It amuses

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void Italian-born architect Simone Pizzagalli has an interesting take on the notion of decay, leftover space and voids. In his Archiprixwinning essay Space, Poetics and Voids, he underlines the narrative importance of voids. In the essay, he draws the parallel between language and space (via cinema), in order to show that the city can be interpreted as an arrangement, a sequence, in which the void has an important place. In language, silence is an meaningful component that carries culture, history and tradition. Pizzagalli writes that in spoken language, “silence becomes a space more than a real void, a pause that is absence of sound but enriched by a tension of meaning, in itself as silence, or in relation with what was before and after”. In written language, voids between words, lines, paragraphs and chapters, the reader can fill in his own meanings and realities. He quotes Italo Calvino who writes in Invisible Cities that Kublai Khan likes to wander through the voids not filled with words, “become lost, stop and enjoy the cool air, or run off”. He connects the thoughts of Roland Barthes, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Albert Camus and others to support his own. The essay has now been transformed into a beautiful publication, designed in sync with the contents, visualy showing narratives, rhythms and tensions in text, colour and illustrations.

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Houses of madness

Abbandouned asylum:Co-

Alessio di Leo

-lorno If any one were near, such a report could not escape his ears; but the only answer was the snow, which began to fall as if my shot had been the signal for its coming.

The soft flakes descended gently, but they would soon put a sheet of white over all the ridges. Some melted on my face, and the damp chilled me. It was not a time to spare my crippled ankle. I limped on, firing my rifle a second, third, and fourth time. I could still see the spiral of smoke, a true beacon to me, though it was all but hid by the increasing clouds.

I fired the fifth time, and while the echo was yet travelling among the peaks I heard a faint and very distant halloo. I had no doubt that it was an answer to my shot, and, to be sure, I emptied a sixth cartridge into the air. Back came the far cry. Like the shot, it too was taken up by the echo: ridge repeated it to ridge, faint and far away, until I could[ not tell from what point of the compass the true sound had come. I was perplexed, but hopeful. I believed that help of some kind was near. I sat down on a rock and expended much ammunition. The snow was still coming down in the same gentle undecided way, but I was compelled to stop between shots and brush the damp, white patches off my clothing. Presently the answering halloo sounded very near me, and I ceased to fire, replying with a shout. Two large dogs scampered through the bushes, and, approaching me, began to bark as if they had brought game to bay. A strong voice ordered them to be quiet, and then the owner of 41

The asylum by the lake

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Photos and text by A.D. Wheeler

It believed that if you give a person freedom and purpose along with a beautiful environment that it will help them towards rehabilitation. The terms for insanity were much different in those days. The entire hospital has been turned into sleeping quarters and classrooms, which for the use of the property is great.

I stayed long enough to get the background photo you see on this page as well as the header photo with the Willard State Hospital logo at the top the article. While there I was told that I needed to see the morgue. So, off I went, skipping, er, driving to the morgue. I seriously did not know what to expect. here. From the outside, it looks like any of the other buildings. Inside however, was a wonderful surprise.

If any one were near, such a report could not escape his ears; but the only answer was the snow, which began to fall as if my shot had been the signal for its coming. The soft flakes descended gently, but they would soon put a sheet of white over all the ridges.

Some melted on my face, and the damp chilled me.

It was not a time to spare my crippled ankle. I limped on, firing my rifle a second, third, and fourth time. I could still see the spiral of smoke, a true beacon to me, though it was all but hid by the increasing clouds.

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GHOSTCITIES B O D I E U N I T E D S T A T E S

G U N K A J I M A J A P A N

Photo by Nadia Jamnik

Photo by Jordy Meow 44

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One of the popular attractions in Iceland is the wreck of a Super DC plane that lies on a remote black sandy beach-like plain. It’s particularly photogenic, and is also somewhat unique in the country.

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Solheimastandur

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Craco Vecchia

Craco Vecchia, one the most famous abandouned theme park in wItaly.

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latter part of Nero’s reign, when the tyranny of the times made it dangerous to engage in literary pursuits requiring freedom and elevation of tone.

He completed the history which Aufidius Bassus left unfinished, and added to it thirty books.

And lastly he has left thirtyseven books on Natural History, a work of great compass and learning, and as full of variety as nature herself. You will wonder how a man as busy as he was could find time to compose so many books, and some of them, too, involving such care and labor. But you will be still more surprised when you hear that he pleaded at the bar for some time, that he died in his fifty-sixth year, and that the intervening xv time was employed partly in the execution of the highest official duties, and partly in attendance upon those emperors who honored him with their friendship. But he had a quick apprehension, marvellous power of application, and was of an exceedingly wakeful temperament. He always began to study at midnight at the time of the feast of Vulcan, not for the sake of good luck, but for learning’s sake; in winter generally at one in the morning, but never later than two, and often at twelve. He was a most ready sleeper, insomuch that he would sometimes, whilst in the midst of his studies, fall off and then wake up again. Before day-break he used to wait upon Vespasian, who also used his nights for transacting business in, and then proceed to execute the orders he had received.

As soon as he returned home, he gave what time was left to study. After a short and light refreshment at noon, agreeably to the good old custom of our ancestors, he would frequently in the summer, if he was

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in the dry, barren stretches on the edge of the Namib

Kolmanskop

The ghost city:

Photo by Jean Wimmerlin

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P a c i f i c

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C i t y

A d r i a n

L o r e n z o

C o l o m b o

S u m m i t

C h u r c h

RUIN LUST Art references ”Keep quiet and keep down, this building is active,” says BryGuy, his pointed finger catching a flashlight behind him. “And no more flashlights.” Everything snaps to black. Between the clanks and buried explosions of the acres-long factory to our right, the only other sound is the percussion of footfalls along the dirt road on which we’re running.

“There’s a guard up there, be careful,” BryGuy announces, heading deeper into knee-high grass. A hundred yards in front of us our target appears: two steel silos jutting stories-high on a flat, black field. BryGuy kneels at the crossroads, and in the shadow of a flickering streetlight whispers: “OK, that’s it. That’s where we’re going.”

Tonight’s event has so far been executed with militaristic precision, each member moving with the economy and alertness of a soldier on a dangerous reconnaissance mission. But this group isn’t wearing fatigues and night-vision goggles; they’re in baggy shorts, untied shoes and black hoodies.

The triggers they’re flipping aren’t on guns, but on beat-up flea market flashlights. And this isn’t a war zone. It’s a weedy field in front of an abandoned sugar refinery along a rural road an hour south of San Luis Obispo. It’s Friday night at 11:30, and Central California’s Urban Explorer Meet has just begun.

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Urban exploration is the examination of off-limits or seldom seen parts of man-made structures.

Unlike other adventurers, such as rock climbers or spelunkers, urban explorers shun the natural world in pursuit of more closely examining and understanding the inner workings of our constructed world, of seeing civic society in its real, raw, unpainted, unplastered and unprettied state. It’s internal city touring, but without guides, double-decker buses, maps or directions. It’s about going where people aren’t supposed to go.

Indeed, a few kids trespassing in old buildings is nothing new.

What makes urban exploration different is that it is not a few kids - it is tens of thousands of people of varying ages and professions.

And it’s not just old buildings: It is subbasements, engine rooms, mine shafts, train tunnels, drains, cemeteries, hospitals, decommissioned ships, nuclear missile silos and more. Urban exploration is a worldwide phenomenon with its own fanzines, conventions, culture, ethics, periodicals, books, movies, MTV specials and clubs from Russia to Australia, Canada to Chile. And it’s growing.

The vetting: Urban Explorer bootcamp All this newfound attention has made many longtime urban explorers cautious. They’ve adopted online pseudonyms such as Darkwolf, Shadowsix, SkullmanX and AllieKat to hide

their identities. Discoveries are no longer openly shared online, but handled like carefully guarded secrets among a small network of trusted cronies. Newcomers are viewed skeptically, and in some cases made to withstand lengthy mental and physical vetting before they are allowed to join other members on explorations.

Which was exactly why I was shoving myself under a chain-link fence and into a broken window on the ground floor of a radiation-polluted former Navy building on a warm Wednesday night in June. Repeated attempts to solicit a response from urban explorers online had gone nowhere for months. Rumors were that law enforcement had been monitoring some Web sites after discovering that burglars were scanning them for tips on how to break into buildings. A last-ditch effort at RSVPing to the Central California Urban Explorer Meet in San Luis Obispo (to which I was not invited) spurred enough curiosity for the host, BryGuy, to write me back to tell me directly that I couldn’t come. I pleaded, explaining that I was neither a cop nor a fed, that I would not compromise the safety of others. BryGuy eventually relented, and said I could possibly come, depending on how I handled myself during a short test run with an established Bay Area explorer named Tunnelbug.

A week later, Tunnelbug pulls into a dirt lot opposite an abandoned fire station in an industrial park south of San Francisco.

In khakis and a new Banana Republic jacket, he looks nothing like the goth-rock, nose-pierced misanthrope I had envisioned him to be. His real name is Jonathan

Tunnelbug leads me through small holes in fences, past swinging gates, down alleys and through 50-foot-high empty warehouses.

“See those buildings over there,” he says, pointing a half mile in the distance. “I’ve heard that’s one of the most toxic sites in the U.S.” We pass one of many dirt mounds covered in black tarps, the plastic sides flapping in the wind. “That plastic is supposed to stop the radiation, PCBs and chemicals in the ground from seeping into the air,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t think it’s working too well.” Tunnelbug stops in the delivery port of a Wal-Mart-size six-story building and pulls a fence from a broken window. He wends his rubbery limbs through an impossibly small hole, turns and says: “You think you can fit?”

Standing about a foot taller than him, I attempt to follow, ripping my pants leg on a rusted barb but making it in. “You’re a natural,” he says, helping me down. He clicks on his flashlight and walks quickly into a matte-black hallway. I follow a few steps behind, picking glass from my fingers.

Through a catacomb of blownout rooms covered in spooky graffiti and rodent droppings, we emerge into the building’s grand foyer, a sweeping acres-wide room surrounded by three-storyhigh glass curtain walls. Pigeons fly through the gauzy light of the dirty windows, their helicopter flutter reverberating through the room. Dramatic shadows from the 30-foot-tall columns cover black puddles of water. The room looks grand and cinematic, a moody backdrop to a big-budget, post-apocalyptic thriller.

It’s dazzling. At the center is an

escalator extending three floors high at a 45-degree angle. “When this building was constructed,” Tunnelbug explains, “this was once the tallest escalator in the world.” with book and tablets, who, in the winter, wore a particular sort of warm gloves, that the sharpness of the weather might not occasion any interruption to my uncle’s studies: and for the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. I recollect his once taking me to task for walking. ‘You need not,’ he said, ‘lose these hours.’ For he looked upon every hour as lost that was not given to study. Through this extraordinary application he found time to compose the several treatises I have mentioned, besides one hundred and sixty volumes of extracts which he left me in his will, consisting of a kind of common-place, written on both sides, in a very small hand, which renders the collection doubly voluminous. He used himself to tell us that when he was comptroller of the revenue in Spain, he could have sold these manuscripts to Largius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces ($16,000), and then the collection was not so extensive as now. When you consider the books he has read, and the volumes he has written, are you not inclined to suspect that he never was engaged in public duties or was ever in the confidence of his prince? On the other hand, xvii when you are told how indefatigable he was in his studies, are you not inclined to wonder that he read and wrote no more than he did? For, on one side, what obstacles would not the business of a court throw in his way? and on the other, what

might not such intense application effect? It amuses me when I hear myself called a studious man, who in comparison with him am the merest idler. But why do I mention myself, who am diverted from these pursuits by numberless affairs both public and private? Who among those whose whole lives are devoted to literary pursuits would not blush and feel himself the most confirmed of sluggards by the side of him? I see I have run out my letter farther than I had originally intended, which was only to let you know, as you asked me, what works he had left behind him. But I trust this will be no less acceptable to you than the books themselves, as it may, possibly, not only excite your curiosity to read his works, but also your emulation to copy his example, by some attempts of a similar nature. Farewell.”

“Keep quiet and keep down, this building is alive.”

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1800-1850 Romantic age:

N A T U R E

back to

People and nature were objectified, and reduced to commodity status.

This was regarded as undesirable and leading to the degradation of the humans.

According to the romantics, the solution was “back to nature� because nature was seen as pure and a spiritual source of renewal. It was also a way out of the fumes o the growing industrial centres for the new industrial rich 56

Caspar david friedrich.

One of the most im-

portant artist in the Romantic age. One of the passionate lover of Ruins ever

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58

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C a s p a r D a v i d F r i e d r i c h 60

Monastery Graveyard in the Snow

Tintern Abbey The Crossing and Chancel Looking towards the East Window

1817-19

1794-95

J o s e p h w i l l i a m T u r n e r

CREDITS Free University of Bolzano - Bozen Faculty of Design and Art Bachelor in Design and Art - Major in Design WUP 18/19 | 1st semester foundation course Project Modul: Editorial Design Design by: Sara Tebaldi Book | Forgotten Supervision: Project leader Prof. Antonino Benincasa Project assistants Maximilian Boiger, Gian Marco Favretto Photography: A.D.Wheeler, Adrian, Aimee Vogelsang, Alessio di Leo, Ben Neale, Christopher Engstorm, Eric Muhr, Felipe Belluco, Giuseppe Mondi, Hiroshi Suhimoto, Jean Wimmerlin, Jordy Meow, Lorenzo Colombo, Micah Williams, Nadia Jamnik, Nick Jio, Nolan Isaac, Patrik Pierre, Tom Delanoue.

Paper: Cartamela 135 gr.

Carta mela 250 gr.

Fonts: Helvetica light Helvetica monospaced Printed: Bozen-Bolzano, January 2019 Inside pages – Digital Print Cover – UV