If it is taken as a given that we inhabit the capitalist ruins that Anna Tsing speaks of, is everything, everywhere, in a more-than-human, hyperobjective understanding of the world, ruined?
What constitutes ruins or ruination, and how one explores this through collaborative, polyvocal, performative and artistic practice research forms the body of this paper. In it the continual and cyclical potential of ruins is questioned; the body is held up and examined as a site of ruin; the ruin is evaluated as a forum for change; the ruins are catalysed or offer a catalyst by becoming a stage; commingled global/colonial/imperial forces implicit in the cause and causality of ruins are assessed; the appropriation of ‘ruins’ is pursued through fields of cultural geography, through indigenous knowledge systems, through ecology.
If ruins have agency, and catalyse more-than-humans, do we and they resist a linear model of progress and instead formulate a multi-agential, networked resistance?
Uncovering this enquiry takes place within an ongoing re-evaluation of the sublime and the anthropocene and the potency of the ruin. Ruins, once lionised as historic and metaphorical symbols of the sublime, now inhabit a rich field within contemporary cultural geography and artistic practice.
This paper explores these notions within a site-specific context of Dublin, Ireland. Working with Maud Hendricks and Bernie O’Reilly (of Irish theatre group OT Practice/Platform) has generated shared research interests into the idea of the ‘Theatre of Ruins’. Positioning their neighbourhood, Dublin 8, as a location of the sublime anthropocene examines the continuously unfolding now of ruination past, present and anticipatory. Using Samuel Beckett’s experience in the bombed ruins of St Lô (The Capital of the Ruins) offers a conduit into wider contemporary witnessing of ruination, both physical and political.
In Dublin 8, a pattern emerges: the ruination catalysed by ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’: peoples and places are being moved, altered and displaced as mere commodities, and communities, both new and more settled, change as quickly as the fabric of the buildings. Ruined buildings are venerated for their historical patina while ruined communities scattered by global market forces are not. This transience is performed daily, invasively and often by external forces; political, historical and commercial.
A cache of archive photos online, showing the changing face of Dublin 8 from the 1950s to the 80s, reveals the hallmarks of the sublime anthropocene. That romantic symbol, the ruin, is a violent reminder of the anthropocene, where the lives of a marginalised community were erased through redevelopment, made precarious by the absenting of industries; the green lungs of the city enclosed, sold off, made private.
Traditional readings of the sublime and the anthropocene speak from a position of dominance and privilege, but can these terms be made useful, giving voice to those marginalised; dislocated; made precarious. Designing, writing and ‘staging’ the Theatre of Ruins activates these ruins as sites of experimentation; a poly-vocal rendering of the unpresentable; the sublime.
What constitutes ruins or ruination, and how one explores this through collaborative, polyvocal, performative and artistic practice research forms the body of this paper. In it the continual and cyclical potential of ruins is questioned; the body is held up and examined as a site of ruin; the ruin is evaluated as a forum for change; the ruins are catalysed or offer a catalyst by becoming a stage; commingled global/colonial/imperial forces implicit in the cause and causality of ruins are assessed; the appropriation of ‘ruins’ is pursued through fields of cultural geography, through indigenous knowledge systems, through ecology.
If ruins have agency, and catalyse more-than-humans, do we and they resist a linear model of progress and instead formulate a multi-agential, networked resistance?
Uncovering this enquiry takes place within an ongoing re-evaluation of the sublime and the anthropocene and the potency of the ruin. Ruins, once lionised as historic and metaphorical symbols of the sublime, now inhabit a rich field within contemporary cultural geography and artistic practice.
This paper explores these notions within a site-specific context of Dublin, Ireland. Working with Maud Hendricks and Bernie O’Reilly (of Irish theatre group OT Practice/Platform) has generated shared research interests into the idea of the ‘Theatre of Ruins’. Positioning their neighbourhood, Dublin 8, as a location of the sublime anthropocene examines the continuously unfolding now of ruination past, present and anticipatory. Using Samuel Beckett’s experience in the bombed ruins of St Lô (The Capital of the Ruins) offers a conduit into wider contemporary witnessing of ruination, both physical and political.
In Dublin 8, a pattern emerges: the ruination catalysed by ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’: peoples and places are being moved, altered and displaced as mere commodities, and communities, both new and more settled, change as quickly as the fabric of the buildings. Ruined buildings are venerated for their historical patina while ruined communities scattered by global market forces are not. This transience is performed daily, invasively and often by external forces; political, historical and commercial.
A cache of archive photos online, showing the changing face of Dublin 8 from the 1950s to the 80s, reveals the hallmarks of the sublime anthropocene. That romantic symbol, the ruin, is a violent reminder of the anthropocene, where the lives of a marginalised community were erased through redevelopment, made precarious by the absenting of industries; the green lungs of the city enclosed, sold off, made private.
Traditional readings of the sublime and the anthropocene speak from a position of dominance and privilege, but can these terms be made useful, giving voice to those marginalised; dislocated; made precarious. Designing, writing and ‘staging’ the Theatre of Ruins activates these ruins as sites of experimentation; a poly-vocal rendering of the unpresentable; the sublime.