subject: What Does The Art Of Urban Explorers Have To Say? [print this page] The act of urban exploration, which means the exploring of disused and abandoned places, has many connotations.
It can be a political act for the left, a way of drawing attention to problems with homelessness and greed. It can also be a political act for the libertarian right, a way of highlighting the lack of freedom and trust placed in ordinary citizens by an overbearing government. It can also be about personal freedom, and the joy of exploring somewhere that few other people have gone.
For a lot of urban explorers, a significant reason to explore is to create something meaningful, something that makes a statement, and something that is wholly their own, untouched by other people's interpretations.
Whether urban exploration has something to say about politics, self-discovery, or the joy of exploration itself, it constitutes a type of art purely by itself, by choosing to do something the hard way, by choosing to do something out of the ordinary.
So, what does it say?
Aside from the political issues touched on earlier, one of the main focusses of artists who are inspired by urbex, short for urban exploration, is sustainability. Recycled art is often explored in detail by these artists, using unusual materials such as scrap metals and old wood to create incredible and often beautiful items. The act of making recycled art intrinsically asks questions about what we value in our everyday life, and about the nature of decay.
Another point frequently touched on is similar to the issues raised by parkour. Urban exploration changes the way we see the city. We stop seeing the city as so divided and divisible when we are shown it from another angle, an angle that we had thought was inaccessible. Suddenly, the buildings and structures of the city become tools designed for us, rather than spaces in which we exist. You realise that you could use that bollard to hop onto that wall, to quickly leap onto that roof, and even if you would never actually do it in real life the fact that you could makes the world a little more full of possibilities.
Finally, artists are often drawn to the fleeting nature of life. Photos of old abandoned pianos, or of playpens, all kinds of things that urbex photographers have snapped, have become objects of fascination for many because of the way they highlight how they joy of today fades so quickly into nothingness. The idea that we are not so important is not a new idea, but it is often brought home in a more immediate and visceral fashion by urban art inspired by urban exploration.
In summary, the urban art inspired by urbex in abandoned places serves many functions. It asks and answers questions about our own lives, about life in general, and sometimes about politics and philosophy as well. Urban art is an important feature of city living, and one that hopefully never disappears.
