Heritage views through urban exploration: the case of ‘Abandoned Berlin’

Abstract

This article frames the practice of urban exploration and its interest towards abandoned places from a heritage perspective. It is argued that most urban explorers prioritise the excitement of trespassing and the creation of their own narratives over the historic importance of the sites they explore. These ‘performative’ explorers avoid deliberate attention that may lead to vandalism or touristification – an alternative way of ‘preserving by not preserving’ that celebrates decay and assumes the sites’ progressive loss. To achieve this, they prefer not to disclose exact locations, creating a divergence towards a minority of practitioners who prefer to collect data on history and current state of conservation to make it public. Attention is paid to these ‘communicative’ explorers, whose documentation renders abandoned places visible, opening further debates about a more inclusive preservation and memorialisation. By distinguishing both heritage views, the objective of this article is to contribute to the enlargement of Heritage Studies by incorporating urban exploration as a space for reflection between loss and bottom-up preservation and interpretation.

Keywords:

• Urban exploration
• abandoned places
• entropic and alternative heritage
• heritage awareness
• documentation and communication
• Berlin

Acknowledgements

This article would not have been possible without the interviews I conducted to Ciarán Fahey, who also played the role of inspiring subject of study, and to Nathan Wright. Thanks to Thomas J. Reed who helped me with the proofreading and general comprehension of the topic. I also owe a debt to Dr Leo Schmidt and Dr Max Guerra, whose encouraging words are always welcome, and to the anonymous reviewers in this journal, whose constructive feedback certainly contributed to improve the article. My deepest thanks to Cristina Santiago for listening to me in the good and bad times. And finally, lacking any external funding support, my sincere gratitude to my parents José María Arboleda and Paula Gámez for trusting me and believing that education is always the best investment.

Notes

1. The author declares that he counts with the permission to identify the two interviewees by name.