In the next several weeks, we will be collaboratively exploring the industrial ruins of Providence as archaeological sites. This will give us first hand experience of exploring places with rich material histories, and the urban stories that are associated with them. These places include an abandoned bridge on Seakonk river and an abandoned amusement park. I will be organizing a field trip to the Warwick Amusement Park, while smaller scale group trips to Fox Point-Crook Point bridge on Seakonk river will be arranged.
I am expecting you to form groups of 2 or 3, with a common interest in one of the sites (or some shared aspect of both sites). The final product will be a visually and textually engaging poster.
Topics of interest may include the following but not limited to it:
a. the practices of graffiti-making on and around the railroad bridge, and around the amusement park,
b. the Providence city government's treatment of these landscape: not too strictly closing off the area while ignoring its existence. The tunnel party incident of the 1990s is an interesting case where the fencing of the tunnel appeared right after the media coverage of the issue. Similar issues at stake probably with the amusement park.
c. the "suspended" temporary character of these urban landscape, prior to "gentrifications" and "re-commodification". Urban development plans and their "cleansing" impact.
d. heterotopic character of the landscapes, in dialogue with Foucault's conceptualization of the "badlands of modernity". (see bibliography below)
e. the two places/industrial landscapes bring together a constellation of relationships, including the occasional inhabitants of the bridge and the amusement park. The places and the material residues of such rather marginal urban practices (including but not exclusive to graffiti art).
f. architectural history of the bridge-building on the Seakonk river or the amusement park.
Bibliography
- Echoes of forgotten places. Scribble Media present ; written & produced by Robert Fantinatto & Leesa Beales ; directed & edited by Robert Fantinatto. Toronto, Ontario : Scribble Media, 2005. Explores abandoned industrial buildings and structures. Includes decaying factories, decommissioned power stations, storm drains, and other places of interest to urban explorers and industrial archaeologists.
- Harris, Steven and Deborah Berke (eds); 1997. Architecture of the everyday. New York : Princeton Architectural Press : Yale Publications on Architecture.
- Dean, Tacita and Jeremy Millar; 2005. Place. New York, N.Y. : Thames & Hudson.
Proposals
Rocky Point Amusement Park, Warwick RI
Introduction, The Contemporary Uses of Industrial Ruins; Conclusion