The Onto-Poetics of Abandoned Places: Bearing Witness and Playing in Ruins

Abandoned places have received increasing popular interest during the past years. Drawing on research that examines the ways in which derelict spaces enable contestation of capitalism and power, the project combines an auto-ethnographic account of visits to several abandoned sites with a theoretical elaboration on ‘witnessing’ and ‘play.’ In discussing ‘urban exploration’ as a practice of bearing witness to and playing with abandoned places, the project deploys a notion of onto-poetics as a site of transformation connecting poetics, life and the political. The onto-poetics of abandoned places lies in the ruins’ potential to effect change in the way in which one conceives of life in urban space beyond the ruin.

The research is part of the book project Art as Political Witness.

RUG investigator involved: Suvi Alt, MSc.

Research themes: Modes of Reasoning | Historical Epistemology