Re-discovering the industrial society
During the last years a phenomenon called urban exploration has emerged in several cities. It is a kind of alternative tourism that focuses on abandoned milieus, urban ruins and ”no trespassing-areas” like sewers, rooftops and so on. Through these activities people are starting to aestheticize and exotize buildings and objects from the last century, the period that can be referred to as the industrial society. This text presents the phenomenon and links it to a broader aestheticization of industrial ruins. Urban exploration is analyzed as a phenomenon that highlights the suggestive power of ruins and the role they can play to convey feelings of melancholia and nostalgia and to also be departure points for reflections on the past and the future. Urban exploration is also a play with the abject, the repelling and mystical, almost gothic dimensions of modern ruins. The essay connects urban exploration with other kinds of aesthetic representation of the industrial, like photography. It is concluded with a introduction of the term Industrial Cool, which is used to describe how industrial environments are aesthetizised and linked to ideas about postindustrialism.
