A showcase of urban decay leaves Sarah NH Vogeler with mixed feelings
NUMB to the stench. That is the immediate consequence one involuntarily suffers after seeing The City: Becoming And Decaying, an exhibition that has been on an extensive worldwide tour since 2010. The things which precede numb would be horror, grief, morbid fascination, in no specific order - the sensations swap with one another then fuse simultaneously, very much like watching that ghastly pile up on route 23 in the film, Final Destination 2.
The exhibition, comprising 176 images from 22 cities around the world, explores a varying degree of processes - the making of cities, their debility, redeployment, rebuilding, the pursuits of advancement, and the trials and shattering errors, and a sober reminder that life is ephemeral in every sense of the word.
FALL FROM GRACE
What intrigues about the show is the photograph after photograph of urban decay, rot, blight - of once thriving metropolises fallen from grace as if hit by the wrath of God’s own thunder, in pandemonium, in decrepitude places such as Ukraine’s Pripyat and Palestinian Gaza, of scenes seized which leaves one completely and utterly gutted.
Dawin Meckel’s DownTown, of his Detroit, USA series is disconsolate and wrung out. Every piece of fixture down to the subject’s attire is bleak and grey. The radiator is yellowed, aged, and the ruffled blankets and bed cover are faded and wrinkled. The subject, Patrick’s half defiant, half vacant stare could very well suggest: “Why bother making the bed when everything outside is depleted, crumbled and in ruin?”
Meckel said: “I did also go to the suburbs, where the whites live. Small, boring developments, where each house looks like the next, with a strip of grass in front that is mowed on Saturdays. Everything seemed intact but it could have been anywhere.”
He added: “The urban core, what makes a city unique and gives it character, is disintegrating. The airplane I took to Detroit flew right over the city. From above you didn’t get a sense of the destruction. Everything just seemed somehow dead. I thought, well, that’s just how it is with an unfamiliar place. In the beginning, it doesn’t say much but after a while you see it through different eyes and that’s the beauty of travelling. My return flight was different. Although I had gotten to know the city and a few of its inhabitants, when I took off, I had the feeling I was abandoning them.”
As author, Elmore Leonard said: “There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living, whose reason for being might be geographical but whose growth is based on industry, jobs.
“Detroit has its natural attractions: Lakes all over the place, an abundance of trees and four distinct seasons for those who like variety in their weather, everything but hurricane and earthquakes. But it’s never been the kind of city people visit and fall in love with because of its charm or think, ‘Gee, wouldn’t this be a nice place to live’.”
Ute & Werner Mahler’s collection of photos in their book Monalisen Der Vorstadte also exploits similar techniques, themes and enclosure in their works. The two photographers magnificently captured “that need to escape” feeling, which seems to plague the young - the dark-haired beauty, in the piece title, Birna, her eyes of quiet desperation devising ways inside her head to flee from her ordinary life.
GHOST TOWN
Pripyat, named after the seemingly endless, dazzling brook curving through Belorussian and Ukrainian Polesiye, owed its survival to the construction of Chernobyl nuclear power station or The V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station as it was recognised during the Soviet periods. The Chernobyl Disaster was the most horrible nuclear power plant catastrophe in history in relation to cost and fatalities, it claimed 31 lives and its continuing consequences such as malignances and disfigurements are still being accounted for. Andrej Kremenschouk’s At The Furniture, Pripyat, Ukraine gives real meaning to the term “ghost town”, with each piece of broken, wrecked, cracked furniture, fixings, tables, chairs, cabinets are of an abandonment that never heals.
The City: Becoming and Decaying - all these mad cities in their haunted, grim beauty. Mad because there are too many people then mad because there are no people and in the end, plain mad. Just.
OSTKREUZ AND GOETHE
OSTKREUZ Agency that presents the 18 image-makers in The City: Becoming And Decaying, derived its name from the Berlin S-Bahn suburban railway. Ostkreuz meaning East Crossing, was established in 1990 and is currently one of the major agencies led by photographers in Germany. This travelling exhibition was realised to mark its 20th year anniversary.
Extending a global reach, The Goethe-Institut, the cultural institute of Germany, promotes German language abroad and nurtures international cultural cooperation.
The institute expresses an all-inclusive picture of Germany by making readily available information on Germany’s cultural, social and political life.
The Goethe-Institut Kuala Lumpur manages a comprehensive gamut of events in contemporary German culture in collaboration and exchange with Malaysian cultural partners.
The City: Becoming And Decaying
When: Until Nov 2, 10 am to 8 pm. Closed on Mondays
Where: Galeri Petronas, Level 3, Suria KLCC, KL Admission: Free