“A romantic fetishization of the relationship between nature and culture lies at the heart of ruin imagery and is central to what makes it appealing. According to Apel, ruin porn “naturalizes decline and reifies the urban ‘explorer’ as possessing a privileged gaze.” In fact, Apel claims, In her book Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline, Dora Apel explores the problematic process of aestheticizing decay. The prevalence of “ruin porn” within the urban exploration community is at the heart of this issue. It does nothing to bolster our collective responsibility to place, to renew our commitment to the people who already inhabit that space. These critics argue that urban exploration may be an expression of love, but it’s the love of an individual. This claim has been challenged by writers and scholars from diverse fields.
But Chapman also claims that urban exploration has a special cultural significance, that it’s ultimately an expression of love for the specificities of a place. Chapman mentions the thrill of transgression, the documentation of decay and production of ruin porn. Many of the things that Dodge cites as characteristic of urban exploration are evident in this quote. We’re in it for the thrill of discovery and a few nice pictures, and probably have more respect for and appreciation of our cities’ hidden spaces than most of the people who think we’re naughty. “Genuine urban explorers never vandalize, steal or damage anything-we don’t even litter.
#Urban explorer meaning code
This code is articulated by Jeff Chapman, a long-time urban explorer who wrote a touchstone book on the subculture. But a cursory search through urban exploration forums and message boards reveals a broad consensus on the ethics of urban exploration within the community. Urban explorers, while they may form communities like the one Macfarlane interacted with, are usually either loners or small packs who pride themselves on their independence and disregard for authority. There is no one unifying code that all urban explorers agree to obey, as such a code would go against the inherent nature of the community. First, to document sites in danger of decay or destruction second, to experience the thrill of accessing a forbidden place third, the desire for an “authentic” experience, an unmediated or unsanitized look at the inner-workings of a city and lastly, a reverence for the counter-cultural aesthetic of “ruin porn,” which values ruin and decay over perpetual construction and newness.Īccording to Dodge, explorers distinguish themselves from mere vandals by their ethical code, which elevates their activities from a hobby to a culturally significant task. Martin Dodge, a senior lecturer of human geography at the University of Manchester, pinpoints four definitive drives of urban explorers.
The ethical dilemmas of urban exploration become even more pronounced when examining the foundations of the movement.ĭr. “There are aspects of urban exploration that leave me deeply uneasy I dislike it’s intermittent air of hipster entitlement and its inattention toward those people whose working lives involve the construction, operation, and maintenance-rather than the exploration-of these hidden structures of the city.” However, Macfarlane’s experience is tempered by the flaws he sees in the movement.
Urban exploration challenges our modern understanding of cosmopolitan living as anonymous, individualistic, and severed from the physical location cities inhabit. The perpetual darkness beneath the city and limestone deposits that defy human conceptions of time further contribute to a complete rewiring of his perception of urban space. He is shocked to feel the rumble of a Metro train passing over his head, and comes into contact with the “invisible city” of cataflies linked by a sense of anarchic camaraderie. For example, when MacFarlane explores the urban underground of Paris, he experiences a radical shift in spatial, temporal, and social awareness. Urban exploration is “political,” he argues, because it has the power to reshape how we understand our surroundings. “At its more political fringes, urban exploration mandates itself as a radical act of disobedience and liberation, a protest against state constraints on freedom within the city There is a surprising number of female explorers, and the class base is mixed, often drawing on a disaffected and legally disobedient demographic.” While researching the subculture of Parisian catacomb explorers in his book Underland (2019), nature writer Robert Macfarlane was both impressed and troubled by the potential of urban exploration to empower the individual. “238” by LK MJ is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (via Flickr)
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