The Centre for Cultural Research’s next seminar at the University of Western Sydney deals with derelict urban spaces:
Helen Armstrong, Adjunct Professor, CCR
“Disturbing Landscapes: arguing for derelict sites and wastelands in contemporary cities”18 May, 2-4.30pm, Superintendent’s Cottage, Building ET, Parramatta Campus, University of Western Sydney
In growing cities such as Sydney, contemporary urban landscapes are fast becoming uniform landscapes of consumption punched through by conduit landscapes of infrastructure. The most regrettable change is the loss of derelict sites and wastelands. Urban designers are keen to reconfigure such disturbing places, in their quest to achieve attractive and consolidated cities. They also hope to lure the so-called affluent ‘Creative Class’ by marketing an urban pseudo sense of place, a commodity manufactured by the Heritage Industry. Most often people see derelict sites and wastelands as ugly and unpleasant. As the French landscape architect, Christophe Girot (2004), describes them, they are ‘landscapes of contempt’. But should we be so contemptuous of these time-laden landscapes? They present time in penetrating ways, providing uncanny insights that could never emerge from the thin landscapes of the Spectacle City or the ersatz ‘placeness’ carefully orchestrated for the so-called Creative Class. The prevailing qualities of disturbing landscapes are the uncomfortable memories of flawed dreams and visions. Vast derelict industrial landscapes resonate with messages of recent failure, possibly explaining why they are being erased so quickly in growing cities. It is in shrinking cities, particularly in former soviet Europe, where urban voids and wastelands are increasing, that we see new micro-tactics associated with the return of social concerns along with innovative approaches to future landscapes. This talk will explore the value of disturbing derelict sites and wastelands.
This sparked a memory: in my pre-teen years, I used to visit Sydney’s Chinatown far more often than I do now, and my favourite place there was the site of what I think is now my university library. But at the time, it was the most fantastic mountain of Victorian-era rubble and twisted metal, in a shell of semi-standing walls. It was the most dramatic place I knew — even better than a Doctor Who quarry — and I’d frolic there for as long as I’d be allowed. Of course, my favourite movie of the time was Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
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