Without contraries, there is no progression.
– William Blake

Everyone agrees. It’s about to explode.
– The Coming Insurrection

A lot of ink is spilled over urban exploration’s relationship to the past and I have previously written about how the anticipated transience of places, the act of bearing witness to their inevitable death, adds to our experience of exploring them in the present. These geographic imaginations of unrealized temporal iterations positively reinforce our notions of place in the world, giving us a sense of agency as we realise that in the midst of all of the endless death and decay, we live, even as we are reminded our time here is limited. This notion has guided historical attractions to ruination for centuries, stretching back to ancient Rome when Livy explored the Cloaca Maxima sewer. The nostalgic lust for derelict and crumbling spaces has never left us for as Alan Rapp writes ‘the metaphorical power of ruination is as relevant today as it was in an ostensibly more Romantic era’. Our love for things of the past, the nostalgia that Nietzsche found so crippling, is described by G.M. Trevelian who writes:

The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone…

Ruins, like dreams, pull us, in one direction, toward our innermost yearnings and, in another, towards a life beyond the constraints of the real; the romantic accounts of ruin exploration in the last 2000 years abound. But clearly part of our attraction to derelict space also has a darker component of an imagined ruined future that has not been written about nearly as much, a Ballardian formulation of urban apocalypse.

Recently, Paul Dobraszczyk wrote a wonderful paper in the journal City where he describes his trip the to exploded nuclear reactor at Chernobyl which ‘incorporated elements of both dark tourism and urban exploration’ as he searched for what Susan Sontag referred to confrontations with ‘inconceivable terror’. Just a few years previous, Tom Vanderbilt penned the book Survival City in which he explores the ruins of atomic America and in the new book Ruins of Modernity (my review in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space forthcoming), Jonathan Veitch tours the Nevada Atomic Test Site where he finds not the expected response of melancholy or nostalgia upon entering the ruins but Baudelaire’s Satanic laughter, a terror that is so visceral the only possible response humour, as if the emotions have been short-wired by the horror.

And so we come to the thesis. Part of the reason we enjoy exploring decaying architecture is rooted in an imagination of a post-apocalyptic future. These places are viscerally enticing in their wretchedness, in part, because imagining ourselves in a future where we populate them during imagined use-lives filled with heroism and adventure is so improbable that it forces one to meditate on the surreal nature of the past that had led us to this most improbable junction in time. Writing of Pripyat, one contributor to the new book Beauty in Decay which represents these sites with burning gothic intensity notes the Pripyat “continues to whisper of a ‘post-human’ earth which, in the end, may be the strongest fascination of them all.”

In our explorations of the ruins of Eastern Europe this past summer, we all took guilty pleasure in witnessing the remains of the failed Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, reacting, at times, absurdly to it. The experience left us in a distinctly different state than ruin exploration in the United Kingdom, the reverence for actual state failure (rather than imagined post-capitalist or “site-specific” failure) making our explorations both more poignant and more guilt-ridden.

If, as Dylan Trigg writes in The Aesthetics of Decay, a derelict factory testifies to a failed past but also reminds us that the future may end in ruin, what does the ruin of a failed state say to us?

Henry James writes in Italian Hours that “to delight in the aspect of the sentient ruin might appear a heartless pastime, and the pleasure, I confess, shows a note of perversity”. This perversity takes on a different form as you leave “home”, the nostalgia wears a dark mask of exotic fetishism that beckons the days of Empire even as we participate in the beginnings of the failure of capitalism and the nation state at home. Of course, these expeditions are markedly less decadent than those of ages past but even speaking English marks us as a potentially dark and exploitative party even as we seek to avoid being “tourists” by following Steve Pile’s advice that in order to get at some of the real (really operative) processes in city life, attention should be paid to those things that appear marginal, or discarded, or lost, or that have disappeared or are in the process of disappearance.

A year ago, we took a trip out to the Mojave Desert in California for a friend’s bachelor party. Our intention was to explore the Calico Mines under the ghost town. Which we did, finding all sort of mysterious chambers, boxes of dynamite, uninvited spectres and endless subterranean playgrounds. But always in the back of our minds, there was a fantasy playing out of someday taking refuge here. Whether that was from drought, famine, nuclear attack or a zombie infestation was never articulated but we all knew it was implied. We were collecting derelict site locations as a post-apocalypse insurance policy. As Susan Buck-Morss wrote in The Dialectics of Seeing, throughout Benjamin’s Arcades Project, the image of the “ruin”, is emblematic not only of the transitoriness and fragility of capitalist culture, but also its destructiveness. Our imaginations were all bolstered by the thought we were seeing ghosts from a future yet to come.

Indeed, as Hell and Schönle write in Ruins of Modernity, ruin exploration can involve “reflections about history: about the nature of the event, the meaning of the past for the present, that nature of history itself as eternal cycle, progress, apocalypse, or murderous dialectic process.” These inevitable intersections took grip firmly as we were leaving the mines. On the way out, we were confronted by survivalists from a militia who had dug into the caves to create desert shelters and were patrolling their territory in a weaponised 4×4 buggy. The father was clearly ex-military, barking orders at his kid to “get on the gun, son” for a photo op. As they sped away, they yelled back at us that the government was collapsing and we would do best to prepare to defend some territory, a new tribalism, they insisted, was on its way.

These post-apocalyptic imaginaries are evident all over popular culture, from films like Mad Max, 28 Days Later, 12 Monkeys or Blade Runner, in books like After London, The World Made by Hand, The Road, The Stand, or The Plague and even in video games like Bioshock and Silent Hill. In all of these depictions, though the future may be bleak and dytopic, there is some underlying euphoria behind the freedom that comes with being released from the state, social life and cultural expectation that has an obvious relationship to the off-the-grid spaces that urban explorers go into. I have to wonder though, as we run into more and more people living this way now (primarily squatters and unsanctioned parties) rather than imagining to live this way in some distant future, what it takes to drive one off the grid like the Dad and son I met in the desert.

It seems to me that the imaginations of these distopic futures become increasingly realistic as our faith in the state to take care of us is eroded; as we see the world collapsing around us politically, environmentally and socially. Now that may be obvious. What isn’t obvious, what no one wants to say, is that we like the idea to some extent. In some part of all of us, we want the society of the spectacle to implode, to see how we would fare in a world not regulated by health and safety, to see what we might achieve when confronted with the most basic challenges of finding food, water and shelter.

I argue that the interest in post-apocalyptic futures in nothing less than an interest in trying to get back to what we have lost in late capitalism, a sense of place, a sense of community, a sense of self. And although urban exploration passes through places rather than staking them out in any permanent way, urban exploration as a movement is a vital bridge, a gateway, because it finally makes to move from the imagined to the physical. When we explore, we take a step off the grid. It is only one more step to stay off it.

“I am both caveman & starfaring mutant, con-man & free prince”

-Hakim Bey

If you are reading this, it is likely you are doing so for one of three reasons. One is that you know me and feel obligated, which we will ignore for now. Two is that you are using this text as an inspiration to act. Kudos to you. Three is that you are scared, scared of breaking your chains, of shattering the illusions set before you and you are using my reflections on experience as escapism, living vicariously through my surrealist decadence. If this third category applies to you, then this posting, this call to action, is just what you’re looking for.

Hakim Bey’s T.A.Z.: The temporary autonomous zone, ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism initially sounds like a purely philosophical proposition, but the TAZ is actually suggested by Bey to only take form in “geographical odorous tactile tasty physical space” (Bey 1985, pp. xi) I wish to elaborate here on some of Bey’s ideas and relate them to what I see as one of the hidden political and philosophical potentials of urban exploration, lurking around in the shadows like a dirty pirate coming to rape your mind. Bey’s description of the place of action, the place of meaningful existence that resides in between analysis and experience jives really well with my current reality. The cracks between physical encounter and intellectual stimulation comprise Bey’s “surrealist archaeology” (xii) and I, indeed, am now a practicing surrealist archaeologist.

My life over the last year, and especially my time during our last pro hobo road trip to Europe, has definitively taught me one thing: spatial barriers are an illusion, far more psychological than physical. They can all be overcome, excavated, sapped and exploded. The remaining fiery remnants are similar to little chocolate candies, a delight for children and pregnant Venus figurines. Pro hobo teaches us what Bush already knew, authority is an illusion, threats of imminent terrorism and spiritual destruction are an illusion, fear is an illusion, society is an illusion. My experience has taught me that I am the only master of my destiny and I decide what happens next.

Sartre, who is rumoured to have written an average of 20 pages a day over the course of his life, has scribbled extensively on freedom. And this freedom, I claim, is what Bey wants us all to exert. I say exert rather than find because the only searching you need to do to find it is within yourself. Locate it in a derelict building in Belgium, find it in an abandoned soviet military base in Russia, find it tearing down a statue of Saddam Hussein, find it while cornering police and taking their weapons, find it in a newborn’s sparkling eyes, find it with your lover in a bathtub surrounded by candles, find it in Grandma’s attic, find it at scummy drum & bass warehouse parties, find it by making things out of felt. But for fucks sake, find it in experience. Get out of that pub, get away from this computer, turn off that goddamn television and then go do something stupid, pointless, reckless and beautiful. And don’t apologize for it. Refuse to explain yourself, refuse to give anyone your “details” when they ask why you are doing it.

We need to find the cross sections between analysis and experience yes, but that is for you to do, no one will do it for you. Mindless action is stupid, but so is mindless acceptance of explanation. Siddhartha walks the middle path.

Bey lays it out for you my friends. “What happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body… mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotion” (3). Then, they used your placated boredom, your distrust, your fear and your ideas of good and evil to create a world in which they could contain you. They told you that it was possible only to live within their structure. Well, fuck them. If we live in democratic societies than we are the structure. If we were in danger of terrorism, I would have been caught when I started scaling buildings in the City of London or when I climbed into the drain system under Los Angeles.

I hardly think I am more intelligent than some well-trained terrorist operative with a will to die. And if that is indeed the case, only one solution remains, given the places I have been able to infiltrate. We are not attacked because the threat is overmagnified or, at worst, nonexistent.

I won’t let this turn into a political rant. To be honest I could care less what kind of bullshit our leaders are feeding us. What I care about is you and me, the people on the ground. Hey… WAKE UP! We are alive! We cannot be stopped from doing anything. If you choose to be stopped, it is not the governments fault, or your friends. It is not because you have no money or because your girlfriend cheated on you when you were 20. It is because you are a twat and you are buying into a narrative constructed by people who want to control you. It may be your state, your parents, or your church, the important thing is for you to recognize that they can only hold you down because you let them. Look to Iran for inspiration. “Smash the symbols of Empire in the name of nothing but the heart’s longing for grace” (12-13).

I suggest urban exploration as a method of subversion; a state of “delirious & obsessive play” (9) that you knew when you were young. I suggest regression and even retardation of our boundary knowledge as “our feral angels demand that we trespass, for they only manifest themselves on forbidden grounds” (22). Remember how it felt when you were young and all signs and people telling you what to do were merely suggestions? They still are. Embrace your inner child again, cultivate “antics that are sharp enough to slice moonlight” (8). You don’t need drugs or alcohol to experience unfettered joy, to launch yourself raving into the stars. Roll around in them and get burned, scream with joy when the beauty melts your eyelids to your face! You only need your body, your imagination and the willpower to seize those experiences which are available to you, regardless of what you are told is or is not possible.

This will to power may find you in danger, hanging from scaffolding on a building or, at worst, dead like our friends Downfallen or Ninjalicious. But that last moment will be found in bliss, because you finished your story on your own terms, with style, kicking in the door and stabbing innocents like Sir Lancelot of Monty Python in your own “particular idiom”.

_____________________________

The fact that I call urban exploration place hacking is significant on multiple levels. Firstly I imply, of course, that we can hack physical space just as computer hackers hack virtual space. But hacking also implies mobility and using mobility to define places is tricky business. We stop in places long enough to eat or take pictures. When going pro hobo, we dwell longer, staying to sleep, BBQ in wheelbarrows or play games. In these instances, our proficiency as place hackers becomes even more transparent as we reconfigure the physical space of encounter, leaving behind archaeological, tangible, physical remnants of our time there, little monuments to the fuck all. But we are always passing through. Turning to Bey again, he suggests that “the TAZ is an encampment of guerilla ontologists”, they “strike and run away” (100). We are on it Bey, and we are running like hell.

The pro hobo tour is a sacred pilgrimage, an experience that Westerners rarely find outside of the cliché roadtrip. It is a massive dérive, a journey to the far horizons of possibility, “a spiritual exercise which combines the urban & nomadic energies…into a single trajectory” (81). As we push the journey further from London, further from our homeland, our comfort food and our safe zone, as we run out of money and continually get drunker on Chimey and experience, the sheer duration “inculcates [us with] a propensity to experience the marvellous; not always in its beneficial form perhaps, but hopefully always productive of insight – whether thru architecture, the erotic, adventure, drink & drugs, danger, inspiration, whatever – into the intensity of unmediated perception and experience” (81).

I now recognize that these mobile transgressions are the heart of what makes urban exploration effective as a mode of spatial resistance. To stay in one place is to create a target for the state, to invite martyrdom at the expense of losing reality hackers. Look to examples of cults, hippie encampments, squatters villages. They are all too easily scoped in, laser painted targets. As Sun Tzu might advise, moving targets are difficult to hit. Keep them guessing where we will go next, where we will post next, who will be there, what will happen. Catch us if you can.

This is not just physical mobility but ontological mobility. Even though subscribers to the urban explorer code of ethics seek to leave behind no traces of our passing, they are inevitable. A dropped glove, a forgotten film canister, a helmet fallen in a well. Even if we do move without a trace, the records taken away will change perception of the space, will encourage more TAZ creations, UrbEx infiltrations and spatial disturbances. Every photograph is a call to action.

This action, let me now assure you, is no revolution. The point of place hacking (and this is where Bey and I may disagree) is not anarchy or revolution. The point, my friends, is insurrection to disrupt order for the distinct purposes of expressing our rights to freedom, our rights to the city and to instil fear in the suits writing policy documents in cubicles, taking frequent coffee breaks to dream about what freedom feels like out there in tasty space. Show them what it looks like, better yet, show them what it feels like. They will love you for it, even as they avert their eyes from your soiled clothing on the tube.

This post is not a call to tear down the government, that would be stupid. As Nietzsche has pointed out, the truly free spirited will not agitate for the rules to be dropped or even reformed, since it is only by breaking the rules that we realize our power. Anarchism exists in the world and those places are shitholes. What we want is to gently remind those who would question us that this is our world, these are our societies. We allow those suits to run them, and that is democracy.

Now…

Go go something stupid and reckless; go create your own TAZ. And remember that “the architecture of suffocation and paralysis will be blown up only by our total celebration of everything” (42).