Download Contemplation - Seattle Central College

Contemplation
Throughout human history, we've always needed to break out and escape from time to
time to contemplate life. Unfortunately now the impulse towards 'getting away' has been
distorted by the lens of capitalism into the 'getaway' or 'break'. The torrent of advertising
logic that slushes around in our minds as we go about our business directs us toward
believing that moments of quiet contemplation are just another commodity, and a very
expensive one at that.
That is why UE has a glimmer of simple genius about it. You don't need to spend money
on renting a bijou hideaway in the Alps just to get away from it all'. Heli, you don't even
need to go the countryside, Your moment of peace, outside of the everyday worid and
far from the thundering of life toward death, is only a NO ENTRY sign away. . .
The modern urban ruin is, if you think about it, the ideal place for contemplation. The
original significance of the word contemplate itself is 'to take something from its
environment and enclose it in a sector'. In other words, you have to take yourself out of
your life in order to truly contemplate yourself and thereby your life. In this way the ruin
provides a kind of objectivity chamber, a place outside the world from which the world
can be gazed upon serenely Once outside of the world you can drop your roles and stop
playing for advantage and step back from your own subjectivity. It's a breath of fresh air,
albeit fragrant with the erotic aroma of urban decay
When explorers babble on about 'the atmosphere' of a location, Perhaps this is what
they are trying to say. But seriously, nobody should be criticised for being unable to
express what contemplation is; poets have driven themselves mad and died trying to
master that trick. Haven't you ever felt that the veil has been lifted and that you can Bee
what it all means for just a few moments'? And then haven't you been horrified when
someone asks you what you were thinking and you can't say anything that doesn't
sound. . .inadequate?
"The sectors of a city... are decipherable, but the personal meaning they have
for us is incommunicable, as is the secrecy of private life in general, regarding
Guy Debord
Of course those pitiful documents, (which in Urban Exploration tend to be JPEG files
passed through photo software and compressed for web display in flashy Java
portfolios), are better than nothing. And it seems that we do need to say something.
When we contemplate we apparently do so with the intention of bringing something back
to the mundane world of survival and social hierarchy that constitutes our daily routine.
Even if it is just an increased sense of the poetic and epic dimensions of our existence,
even if it is just a little more inner peace, then surely a moment of contemplation is
cheap at any price?
The urban ruin is not, however, a blank canvas, a space devoid of its own story for us to
hide in and get all starry eyed about the cosmos, What such sites do is to bring history
into focus as an imminent and real thing. Then surely the type of contemplation that they
invite is inevitably about time, about death and about the past? Our lives are superabundant in 'somethingness' and we are constantly over-stimulated. This overstimulation is what makes us numb and the numbness is what we call boredom. The
abandoned place, with no functioning purpose has the antidote we require to all of that:
nothingness
"Here, nothingness is the vantage point in which the absent past is traceable
in the unformed present.. .Nothingness is thus a volatile and active force,
which gathers thought rather than destroying it."
Dylan Trigg
It is a quietly hopeful thought if you care to decipher it.
Imagine: the explorers are out there now in the netherplaces of the city, gathering Iheir
thoughts in the nothingness, invoking the hidden history of the city and we can only hope
that they bring back some nothing to save us a!l from a!l this something.
History
They say that history is dead. They say it ended some time toward the end of the last
millennium Weil, why should we mourn for the closing of a club we were not invited to
join? Their history is dead. BIG history is dead. It was a monolith constructed against us
and without it blocking our view we can see more clearly.
Our history is in the whispers that surround us and the tales passed on from those who
came before. It is a history of people like us who did what they did, just like we do, as a
response to the strange world they found themselves in. They knew that in some ways
they were vulnerable and weak and in others strong, and that is the power of real
history; it is true and strange and everyday and it is relevant and it gives us power and
dignity. It does not support the rights of tyrants. It whispers that the emperor wears no
clothes.
Urban Explorers have stumbled across this history, this folk history (the history of folk not the history of power) and in many ways it is the treasure that these urban pirates
seemed to have been seeking all along. It may be an irrational impulse to leap over
the metaphorical wall into the ruined gardens of the haunted house but once there the
treasure found is very real in an unexpected way.
The artefacts scattered in the ruined factory give glimpses of the life of the place, and
the life of the place means the people who used it and how they did so. This is the thrill,
the shiver of fascination that rewards the explorer. This other life is suddenly revealed in
an immediate and exceedingly intimate way. It is history unmediated, in its raw pure
form.
This encounter between the living and the dead is the source of the stories that we teil to
make sense of being alive, and to be that explorer at that moment is to be given back
the power to tell those stories for yourself. We don't want to be passive consumers of
History with a capital H, neither spoon fed to us by the Discovery Channel or
intellectualised beyond our reach in the lecture hails.
These are modern ruins and that is the key to understanding their historical fascination.
They are not dead fragments of a previous way of life; they are glimpses of our current
way of life as if it were already gone. History in this sense is extraordinarily vital. It not
only allows us to feel an intimate human connection with the people immediately before
us but also begs us to think about where we are going next.
It is no wonder, then, that so many Urban Explorers have adopted the practice of
researching sites both before and after visiting them. The research gives the imagination
greater scope to visualise the ghosts of the ruins. In so doing the explorer can invoke the
spirit of the location, in many ways like a shaman. The devil is in the details. An old shoe
here, a rusted machine there...
Risk
Why are explorers, among other urban tribes, attracted to risk? Is it because modern life
is too easy for us? Perhaps we have lost something along the yellow brick road of
progress, something difficult to capture but something that we still need nevertheless.
Consider for a minute why risk might be enjoyed and sought after. We are supposedly
designed by evolution to avoid danger and yet...
"Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation
entails the risk of dying of boredom?"
Raoul Vanegeim
The crushing sense of wasted time, ennui and existentialist angst that characterises the
average Sunday afternoon watching TV is perhaps a worse horror than whatever lurks
out there beyond the 'No Entry' signs. The unknown and its associated risks are a way to
escape this vegetable mental state
"People get bored easily because in our world almost everything is comfortable,
most of the time you just have to press a few buttons and your wish comes true."
Tweaky242, Urban Explorer
There is a theory that happiness can be measured in terms of the size of your triangle.
Your triangle is traced along the lines of travel between the three main geographical
points of your everyday life; that 's to say your home, your job and your supermarket. The
theory suggests that the smaller the triangle, the happier the person. I suspect most
Explorers would choke on their coffee to hear that. I aspect that the UE map of
happiness would look quite different.
There is a whole world of difference between walking down a street You know and
walking on a surface you don't even know you can trust The difference primarily lies in
the stale of mind. When you are out testing each step like a cat, with your senses
heightened, alive to all the possible dangers of the moment, you are also more
profoundly aware of 'being’. When you are safe and comfortable your mind gets bored
and wanders off. When you are at risk you are present in a total way. So risk, then, is a
method of living in the ever elusive moment.
Or is it the hormones? The fight or flight response kicks up a powerful package of free
drugs, courtesy of the hypothalamus. Hiding from a potential mugger in a huge, deserted
industrial site may sound dangerous but, statistically speaking, it's a relatively healthy
way to get high.
'Health is Fascism.’
Graffiti, Abandoned Factory, East London
The risks involved in UE range from the negligible to the mortal. Most explorers have at
least one war story to tell by the fireside. Abandoned buildings are not necessarily
deserted To be harassed by a bored security guard may well be the least of your worries.
Territorial squatters might take offence at your presence. Perhaps more likely would be
the appearance of a desperate junky, willing to take advantage of your isolation to steal
your expensive camera with the application of a little violence.
There was the guy who narrowly missed taking a concrete block to his head while
exploring a Spanish prison. He had to hide from the gang responsible. Others, too, speak
of the chilling realisation that there is someone else in the building and that they are
hunting you. One man spoke of hiding for hours while listening helplessly to the horror
story soundtrack of creaking and slamming doors while somebody was looking for him
with god alone knows what intention in mind.
Then there is the heavy hand of the law. SuspiciousMinds found himself on the wrong
end of a SWAT team complete with dogs, guns and knee-in-the-back tactics. They were
looking for copper thieves. Legal questions vary from country to country but nobody
wants to have to talk themselves out of a charge, much less a bit of 'appropriate' use of
force.
Although an inopportune meeting with security is at best an embarrassment, it's nothing
compared to taking a fall through a rotten floor. The risk of personal injury is quite low for
a careful and intelligent explorer but it remains, of course However, this seems to be the
point. As an individual you are at last in a situation where your own decisions carry the
full weight of consequence. That is a type of freedom that we may have forgotten about
as a culture When you explore a building, you make the decision about whether or not
that floor is safe enounh to walk across. The decision and therefore your life for that
moment, belongs to you.
Explorers vs Romance?
The Explorer, like the Pirate, the Wizard or the Mad Scientist, is a Romantic figure. Ever
since the old epic poems of the Vikings told of the deep longing for the unknown that
they felt when they stood on the shore gazing out to sea, the explorer has been seen as
a mysterious and brave adventurer.
There is a deep need in the human psyche for exploration that is, perhaps, a function of
our genetic need for expanding the gene-pool, or simply the increased survival value of
having wider access to resources. However, for now let's allow science to deal with all
that logical pretence.
Exploration is cool. And cool is another word for 'Romantic'.
Uban Explorers are, without doubt, romantics. They collect data in the form of
photographs but not with any scientific objective in mind. They do it to try to capture 'the
magic', 'the soul’ of a place. They are adamant that these buildings should be secret,
protected from the damaging gaze of logic and its restless redevelopment and
classification.
Explorers are outsiders; they participate in a secret society and have their own codes of
honour. They see something precious that cannot and should not be defined and
controlled in their experiencse and they seek to keep it safe.
Urban Explorers are Romantic in the 19th Century sense of the word. They value beauty,
feeling and content rather than order, function and underlying form. Like 19th century
Romantics, they are concerend with individual freedom and the unfettered following of
personal fascinations. Urban Exploration is a fundamentally poetic practice. If it were
not, it would be simple to define its objectives.