This event was the first in Sheffield Hallam University's Space & Place Group's 2023 series: 'Exploring'. For our first session we examined the action and meanings of close-to-home exploration of broken portions of the built environment in the company of Denzil Watson (SHU), Ines Moreira (Universidade do Minh, Portugal), Harry Willis Fleming & Jane Wildgoose (artists).
For our second session (which will be on 26 October 2023) we will be 'Going Underground' (and this event will include a launch of Kevin Bingham's new book, Exploring the Natural Underground: A New Sociology of Caving (Routledge, 2023)). Then on 16 November 2023 there will be a session 'On the Rocks', looking at varied engagements with vertical and horizontal stone surfaces. The series will then conclude (probably) with 'On Your Bike' on 7 December 2023, including a book launch for Jim Cherrington's forthcoming edited collection, Mountain Biking, Culture and Society.
Our presenters for 'In Ruins' were:
Luke Bennett (Sheffield Hallam University)
Chair & Introduction: Serious play and meaning-making in knackered buildings
Denzil Watson (Sheffield Hallam University)
Urban Exploration: the motivations behind documenting buildings in decay
When I talk to people about the type of photography I do, the reactions are often quite polarised. Some people completely get it and understand why while others are a little more perplexed. I’ve often asked myself what the motivations are behind what I do. Like most hobbies, it is not without its dangers, but with an awareness of the risks the pastimes can sometimes expose you to, these in the main can be managed and minimised. The urbex landscape has undergone a number of changes and developments in recent years. One of the less welcome developments the hobby has attracted is the attentions from RU-vidrs, Instagrammers and Facebookers who appear more concerned by the likes and subs they are generating than the history of the places they explore. Despite this, there remains a dedicated community of explorers who are more concerned with the history of the buildings they are documenting before it is lost for good. It is this aspect of urban exploring that I will tap into when explaining the motivations behind why I engage in this fascinating pastime and recently culminated in the publication of my first book in this area, “Sheffield in Ruins”, late last year by Revelations 23 Press.
Ines Moreira (Lab2PT, Universidade do Minh, Portugal)
Post-Nostalgic Knowings: curatorial actions in deindustrialized areas
How to embrace the present conditions of former industrial territories? Cultural, political and economic conditions define different approaches towards the past, filtering it as heritage, as legacy, as evidence, or as property. In-between deindustrialization and post-industrialism, I visit our notion of “Post-Nostalgic Knowings” after a research project, a book, and a course documenting tentative strategies for curatorial and artistic intervention in former industrial areas under transformation. By looking at curatorial and artistic projects, in two European borders, the Baltic and the Atlantic Southwest, I identify different conditions and positions - if the Portuguese word for nostalgia, saudade, mostly celebrates memory, the Russian toska enunciates an extreme anguish. How does politics and culture resonate with action in former industrial territories?
Harry Willis Fleming (Architectural Historian) & Jane Wildgoose (Artist)
Stoneham Revisited: inspiration, creativity, and alternative value found in a country house’s destruction
For almost 20 years, historian Harry Willis Fleming and artist Jane Wildgoose have explored the ambivalent history and afterlife of North Stoneham House, Harry's family’s ancestral mansion in Hampshire which was demolished in 1939. In late 2022, the remaining foundations and materials were crushed and levelled for an upcoming housing development. Soon afterwards, Harry and Jane received the vast array of finds from the developer’s archaeological dig, ranging from fragments of ornamental marble to rusty bed springs. The focus of this presentation will be on the nature and processes of Harry and Jane’s collaboration, and the inspiration they have drawn from Stoneham’s story deployed as a seedbed of ideas, themes, and associations. In complementary sections, Harry and Jane will each describe the Stoneham project as a creative nexus between their individual practices. They will outline their joint approach to experiential fieldwork, including interviewing former residents , the creation of a temporary tented museum on the house’s site, and other entanglements with the landscape and local community. They will conclude by reflecting on the insights and experiences they have gained from investigating together - through a ludic, creative dialogue - the ruination, fragmentation, and erasure of Stoneham; and ask where this might take them next.
28 сен 2024
