archaeography

Despite their position in the margins of the city, ruins are spaces where people can carry out activities without the surveillance of police or the increasingly ever-present CCTV cameras. Although we are warned to keep out because of unspecified danger, ruins accommodate a wealth of activities and are used as unofficial resources by city-dwellers.

Most obviously, derelict buildings are a place to shelter, and can house communities of homeless people who, finding dry and windproof space amidst the rubble, can set up temporary home, free from the attention of the police and other citizens. Sheets of tarpaulin and bits of old sofas can be arranged to create temporary homeliness. Ruins also provide a space in which to carry out forbidden or illegal activities. They can become a venue for sexual adventures of all kinds, offer a place in which to drink and to consume drugs, and provide a space to which criminals can retreat to investigate their ill-gotten gains. Ruins also provide a huge free canvas for the activities of graffiti artists who are able to carry out their designs unhindered. Graffiti of all sorts, from teenage doodlings to the large expanses created by more adventurous creators can add to the allure and atmosphere of unoccupied buildings.

Derelict sites thus serve as playgrounds for many activities that would be frowned upon if carried out elsewhere. Mountain-bike enthusiasts and skaters may ply their skill across the rubble and the often vast empty floorspace of large emptied factories and warehouses, and the surrounds act as an ideal venue for motorcycle scrambling. In larger spaces, stolen cars can be driven and then abandoned or set on fire. Children are apt to create dens and impromptu adventure playgrounds, erecting swings and chutes. Whilst investigating a derelict rubber factory in South Wales, I was pelted with small pebbles by a gang of kids who knew the building so well that they were able to remain hidden from my attempts to track them down. The expanses of overgrown surroundings, previously well-pruned gardens and verges of factories, serve as realms in which plants can be grown, ranging from vegetables to cannabis. Outside the usual routes designated for pedestrians, there is also the chance to walk amongst un-manicured space, with dogs and other companions, whilst unregulated space can also be utilised for grazing horses and parking cars.

Ruins are also places that because they are unused and slated for demolition, provide opportunities for pleasurable destruction and spectacular acts of vandalism (often called ‘mindless’). Certain materials such as glass and porcelain urinals seem to attract particular attention for the agreeable ways in which they dissemble when assaulted with stones and iron bars. Disordered, unkempt and unpoliced spaces lend themselves to carnivalesque celebrations where youth can create big bonfires, smash things to watch them splinter, enjoy making visceral explosions of noise and tipping over slimy industrial substances, and in other ways revel in the joy of being able to act out of control.

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