Did people check out the comments to the Cafe Culture post? The link Kate posted up to detroitblog is really worth following. Many wonderful posts on exploring dilapidated Detroit, on wandering through abandoned spaces, on picking through the remains of occupant's lives and (re)constructing narratives out of what is discarded and left behind. It recalls Robin's original post on life as a process of dilapidation/accretion. What we are as the traces we leave, the hoards we assemble (which become rubbish, detritus, to be disposed of, once we die). Death, then, not as a single moment, but as the process of disassembly and dissolution of the collections and connections we make.
Posted by mark at February 26, 2004 12:48 AM | TrackBackI don't know if you've come across this already, but there's actually quite a large online community dedicated to exploring abandoned urban spaces. If you ignore the half of the community that consists of boys playing soldiers then there's some wonderful writing and photography around. http://www.infiltration.org is a good starting point...
Posted by: jngpng at February 27, 2004 12:43 AMYes, it's called Urban Exploration. I know this because my own website (www.geocities.com/dylan_trigg/index.html) looks at the philosophical implications of urban decay and ruins.
Posted by: Dylan at February 27, 2004 01:54 PM