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Bygone Era
Location: Tucson AZ. East Coast Boy At Heart Gender: Male Total Likes: 32 likes
| | | | What Urbex means to Me < on 4/28/2020 4:44 PM > | Reply with Quote
| | | Hey Guys, It is Bygone Era. I Started writing this short(relatively) paper about urbexing. I just want to get some of your guys' opinions about it so here:
Forgotten and Found: The Value of Decay By Bygone Era Since the beginning of civilization, humans have never been satisfied to simply live in the natural world. We are known to erect structures, fashion tools, and invent our comforts. Most of these creations outlive us and their own usefulness. They are often left behind, derelict and forgotten, a tactile memory of what we once needed and have now moved past. There’s a wide gap between Indiana Jones swinging through ancient ruins in search of treasure and the slow, dry work of real archeologists digging through layers of shattered pottery. Somewhere in between is urban exploration, “a term coined in 1996 by Jeff ‘Ninjalicious’ Chapman in his zine Infiltration” as “the investigation of man-made places ignored and largely unseen by the public.” (Paiva, 2008) “Urbex”, as it’s known in forums that are popular with explorers, can encompass any human creation left abandoned and artistically rotting, from desert junkyards to deserted military installations. Just as in archaeology, all fragments of human civilization are important but the urbexer is chronicling emotional connection rather than historical ephemera and the draw of urbexing might be more closely associated with art than academics. People who understand the beauty of a natural stone arch, the attraction of the Crown Jewels, or the lure of a mystical relic like the Blarney stone are less enthusiastic about the appeal of a decrepit gas station, but who can forget the first time as a child they discovered a strange, abandoned structure or a flotilla of interesting garbage, maybe in the woods, maybe in a field or stream behind their house? “Many of us first began exploring abandoned places as part of a childhood rite of passage anthropologists and folklorists have dubbed ‘Legend Tripping’--that ‘I double-dog-dare-you to go in that spooky old house!’ experience.” (Paiva, 2008) As we grow older, we lose that sense of wonder and start to see only the hazards of the old and unkempt. Urbexers are a bit like those whose inborn ability to learn new languages doesn’t fade with age. They are able to hold onto that childlike awe of broken things and the beauty of decay. In a sense, history is a monetary system. It assigns high value to the rare, unusual, and the celebrity: paleolithic cave drawings, Anasazi cliff houses, George Washington’s letters. But just like money, value is arbitrary. The accessibility of modern urbexing sites--that crumbling old factory your mom might have complained they still haven’t torn down--often leads to low societal valuation, but their very ordinariness is what makes them truly valuable. As a people, we preserve our historical objects with a sense of immortality: if we can still see paleolithic man’s drawings, we can chart our own supremacy in the timeline of the world. But modern decay is a constant reminder of our fragility. In the end, Mother Nature always wins. Tearing down and rebuilding is the only way to stay ahead in the race. Abandoned structures are stooped with tragedy--the hare of civilization taking a rest while the tortoise of time ambles inevitably forward. “The songs of broken things are everywhere. The flaps on derelict airliners creak back and forth from under the eaves and broken shingles of decrepit buildings…The air is thick with an atmosphere of foreboding and infinite sadness.” (Paiva, 2003). Urban exploration will not mitigate the inevitable decline of modern life or the mortality of human instruments, and likewise, isn’t going to force decomposing casualties of advancement--the old office buildings, the rusting cranes--into the broader historical narrative. But it can breathe on the spark of life. As human history continues its march onwards, the charge is left to urban explorers to document the emotions, the wonder, and the transience of our dominance. Like a bird nesting the cartilage of a roofless warehouse, all that is left to these explorers is to be: “[an] observer recording the final moments of a crumbling man-made world that few ever get to see,” (Paiva 2008) Bibliography: Paiva, Troy. Boneyard: SoCal's Aircraft Graveyards at Night. Mount Pleasant, America Through Time, 2019. Paiva, Troy. Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West. St. Paul, MBI Pub., 2003. Paliva, Troy. Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2008. TL;DR: Urbex is underappreciated and connects people to the fact that what we make, just like us, doesn't last forever. Any comment(hopefully constructive)is welcome!
| -Bygone Era |
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