Tagurbex

The Urban Explorers of Instagram

humzadeas looking over the city

Adrian Chen writes:

There has long been a subculture of so-called “urban explorers” who have made a game of accessing off-limits places. But Deas and the other Instagrammers distinguish themselves from these mostly older, more cerebral trespassers. “They’ll go to the top of the bridge and touch it and be like, Wow, this architecture!,” Deas says, a little dismissively. Urban explorers take photos mainly to document that they’ve been there, while for Deas the image is the whole point. The outlaw Instagrammers have more in common with graffiti artists, another subculture of underground creatives who make their work in the cracks of the urban landscape. Many Instagrammers go by enigmatic handles that would look good scrawled on the side of a subway car, like Novess, Black_soap, Heavy Minds, and 13thwitness, aka Tim McGurr, an unofficial godfather of the scene. But the outlaw Instagrammers are better-positioned to thrive in post-Giuliani, post-Facebook New York than old-school graffiti writers: transgressive enough to be cool, but innocuous enough to amass a huge following without getting hunted down by the NYPD.

Full Story: New York Magazine: The Outlaw Instagrammers of New York City

In a follow-up, New York magazine reports that Deas has been arrested.

(Thanks Skry)

Long Article on Urban Exploration (Urbex)

urban exploration

Matthew Power on the urbex subculture:

Despite his scholarly bona fides—his doctoral work in geography at Royal Holloway, University of London had garnered wide acclaim—Garrett scarcely looks the part of an academic, neither tweedy nor fusty. Thirty-two years old, with a trimmed goatee and a mop of straight brown hair hanging over black plastic frames, he grew up in Southern California and ran a skate shop before deciding to pursue a doctorate. His face, which is frequently lit up in mischievous, eyebrow-raised delight, still bears the pocks of over a dozen piercings he dispensed with in the interests of maintaining some veneer of academic respectability.

But it was his doctoral research itself that was perhaps most punk rock. His dissertation in human geography, which he had defended the previous year, was entitled “Place Hacking.” The title came from his argument that physical space is coded just like the operating system of a computer network, and it could be hacked—explored, infiltrated, re-coded—in precisely the same ways. He conducted a deep ethnographic study of a small crew of self-described “urban explorers” who over several years had infiltrated an astonishing array of off-limits sites above and below London and across Europe: abandoned Tube stations, uncompleted skyscrapers, World War II bomb shelters, derelict submarines, and half-built Olympic stadiums. They had commandeered (and accidentally derailed) an underground train of the now defunct Mail Rail, which once delivered the Royal Mail along a 23-mile circuit beneath London. They had pried open the blast doors of the Burlington bunker, a disused 35-acre subterranean Cold War-era complex that was to house the British government in the event of nuclear Armageddon. The London crew’s objective, as much as any of them could agree on one, was to rediscover, reappropriate, and reimagine the urban landscape in what is perhaps the most highly surveilled and tightly controlled city on earth.

Full Story: GQ: Excuse Us While We Kiss The Sky

(via Wayne)

See also:

Garrett’s thesis

Garrett’s site, Placehacking

Previous urbex stories on Technoccult.

“Urban Reclamation” new trendy past time?

Today’s Trendcentral Newsletter:

Similar to the recent flash mob phenomenon, the idea of taking over, or in some way owning the urban landscape is becoming popular with trendsetters. Referred to as “urban reclamation”, “urban exploration”, and “space hijacking,” this desire to discover random or out of the way places in one’s own city is becoming so appealing that trendsetters are seeking out abandoned areas such as the High Line in NYC, an elevated train track on the West Side between 34th and 17th Streets. We have also heard of organized events in unusual places, such as parties in subway cars in NYC (including streamers and punch), happenings in empty schoolyards after hours in Chicago, and most recently a guerrilla party/fashion show at a Wal-Mart in Oconee County, Georgia. Artists in NYC are also participating in The Outlaw Project, which is a temporary series of art installations in unorthodox locations, such as bar bathrooms.

Exploring urban landscapes and nontraditional settings may take off because it offers an interesting experience which is often much more attainable than material things in these financially pressed times.

How is this different from the early [insert any underground scene here] scene? That it’s being done by “normal” people? Hm.

And is this “urban exploration” anything to do with the old, rather dangerous subculture, or does this merely involve going out and look for abandoned spaces?

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