EXTREME SITES project
Industrial Remnants [WP1]
PI: Inês Moreira
Starting from architecture, landscape and territory, we tend to think of post-industriality as material evidence and traces of the industrial past, its ruins and old infrastructures. For industrial heritage and industrial archaeology, the care for the factory, machinery and original brands encapsulates it referring to its foundational moment; the present condition tends to be perceived as a distortion, or a failure of the heroic past. From visual and urban cultures, post-industriality is part of the collective imagination of the late 20th century, motivating appropriation and intervention, from urban explorers to graffiti and other spatial practices that reveal the interior of abandoned giants. Cinema played an important role in defining its apocalyptic aesthetic, both in Soviet, American and independent films.
Considering a broad chronology, the traces left by the extraction and manufacturing industries in their different stages, from the initial installation of infrastructures, to the process of emptying and deindustrialization and, in some cases, their subsequent (and current) post-industrial condition. If the implementation of industrial zones causes changes and generates systemic social, landscape and environmental impacts, the long years of dismantling and abandonment that follow also generate a reality that cannot be ignored. Whether due to relocation, crisis or economic transition, places are taken over by degradation and an uncertain future for local communities, urban settlements and natural conditions, which are inevitably changed.
As society moves towards a post-industrial model, where the service economy, culture and knowledge play a central role, challenges arise related to the reuse and management of remaining legacies and inheritances, in some cases heritage. Places that once evoked the productive power of industrial activity, today portray the complexity of environmental degradation felt locally and globally, and are therefore the object of activism as well as real estate speculation while defending themselves from rigid frameworks and classifications about the past.
Extreme Sites project´s workpackage 1 brings together several case studies, from the Baltic to the north of Portugal, which arouse the interest of researchers, curators and artists who carry out their research in the academic context, within the scope of undergraduate, master's and doctoral projects, as well as in residencies or in public exhibitions. Linked by critical readings of the romantic and canonical vision of the history of industry, ruin and image, the case studies point out other possibilities and experiment with alternative approaches to the past.
Researchers
Inês Moreira
Joana Rafael
Miguel Costa (collaborator)
Collaborators
Beatriz Duarte
Flora Paim
Inês Azevedo
Joana Mateus
Pedro Silva