Ruins of the Twentieth Century

《二十世纪的废墟》是对过去一百年来建造和废弃的地方的调查和欣赏，这些地方大多位于英国和爱尔兰，但也更远。它们包括废弃的工厂、过时的军事设施、废弃的度假胜地和被忽视的现代主义建筑：这些我们都知道但习惯性地被忽视的建筑。这些不是浪漫的废墟，比如受到遗产组织珍视并每年有数千人参观的废墟。但这些不受欢迎的网站有时会告诉我们更多关于我们自己最近过去的品味、文化和历史的信息。在腐朽的状态下，它们提醒我们进步的脆弱本质，并回忆起现在被寄托在过去的未来主义梦想。我对这样的建筑和地方的态度首先是一个创造性的作家，其次是一个文化历史学家。许多诗人和小说家(从威廉·华兹华斯和约翰·罗斯金到塞缪尔·贝克特和J·G·巴拉德)都写过关于废墟的文章，无论是古代的还是现代的。废墟一直是个人悲痛、文明消逝和普遍衰落的悲哀事实的丰富隐喻来源。我特别感兴趣的是写作发生了什么/我自己的写作/当它与最近过去的残余物面对面时，这些残余物不是那么容易被寄托到风景画的领域。这个项目旨在发现一种关于景观和建筑的新写作方式，以公正地对待上个世纪废墟的陌生感。写作本身在很大程度上是我研究的基础。我将出版一本书和一篇融合了历史和回忆录、诗意描述和建筑欣赏的文章。我的重点将始终放在作为一名作家如何发展自己的技能，以应对有问题的废墟的物理现实。然而，在这种富有成效和深思熟虑的水平背后，将打开另外两个调查领域。首先，我将对废墟本身进行广泛的实地考察，并对周围社区进行档案研究和调查。其次，我需要研究废墟鉴赏本身的历史，因为它已经在文学、建筑史和视觉艺术中发展起来。最后一个类别是至关重要的，因为几十年来，20世纪的废墟一直是艺术家们的永恒主题：罗伯特·史密森、戈登·马塔-克拉克、苏珊·希勒和塔西塔·迪恩都围绕着这个主题创作了作品。在某种程度上，我的项目是一种发现这些艺术家在面对这样的地方时所使用的想法和方法如何为创造性作家的作品提供灵感的一种方式。我打算将我的写作和研究范围扩大到文学界以外，参与当代艺术，并在我自己展示我选择的废墟时，与艺术家和摄影师合作。换句话说，这项研究将不断地跨越学科，质疑我自己的专业知识，问我试图将某种神秘和多方面的东西描述为废墟意味着什么。这个项目的主要结果将是一本名为《二十世纪的废墟》的书/一本唤起这些地方的氛围，解释它们的玩忽职守，并试图想象它们未来可能有什么用途的创造性非小说类作品。我还将写一本更短的书，面向更多的学术受众，讨论毁灭主题的哲学方面。我的研究的其他分支将以论文和文章的形式出现在文学期刊、艺术杂志和报纸上，以及在博物馆和美术馆以演讲的形式出现。我希望，这些出版物和活动将鼓励就如何处理二十世纪的废墟进行更广泛的公开辩论。

Ruins of the Twentieth Century is an investigation and appreciation of places built and abandoned in the last hundred years / most of them in the UK and Ireland, but also further afield. They include derelict factories, outmoded military installations, defunct holiday resorts and neglected Modernist buildings: the kinds of structures that we all know and habitually ignore. These are not romantic ruins, such as are prized by heritage organizations and visited by thousands of people each year. But these unloved sites tell us more, sometimes, than we care to acknowledge about the taste, culture and history of our own recent past. In their decayed state, they remind us of the fragile nature of progress and recall futuristic dreams that are now consigned to the past.My approach to such buildings and places is first of all that of a creative writer, and second that of a cultural historian. Many poets and novelists (from William Wordsworth and John Ruskin to Samuel Beckett and J. G. Ballard) have written about ruins, both ancient and modern. The ruin has been a rich source of metaphors for personal grief, the passing away of civilizations and the melancholy fact of universal decay. I am interested particularly in what happens to writing / to my own writing / when it comes face to face with the remnants of the recent past, which are not so easily consigned to the realm of the picturesque. This project aims to discover a new way of writing about landscape and architecture that will do justice to the strangeness of the ruins of the last century.The writing itself is to a large degree the basis of my research. I will produce a book and essays that mix history and memoir, poetic description and architectural appreciation. My focus throughout will be on how my own skills as a writer can develop in response to the physical reality of the ruins in question. Behind this productive and reflective level, however, two other fields of inquiry will open up. First, I will make extensive field visits to the ruins themselves, and follow those up with archival research and investigations in the surrounding communities. Second, I will need to study the history of ruin appreciation itself, as it has developed in literature, architectural history and the visual arts.This last category is crucial, because for some decades now the ruins of the twentieth century have been an abiding theme for artists: Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Susan Hiller and Tacita Dean have all made works that circle around this subject. To some extent, my project is a way of discovering how the ideas and methods used by these artists, when confronting such places, might inform the work of a creative writer. I intend to widen the scope of my writing and research beyond the literary world to engage with contemporary art and to collaborate, in my own presentation of my chosen ruins, with artists and photographers. The research, in other words, will constantly cross disciplines and question my own expertise, asking what it means to try to describe something as enigmatic and multifaceted as a ruin.The main result of this project will be a book entitled Ruins of the Twentieth Century / a work of 'creative non-fiction' that conjures up the atmosphere of these places, accounts for their dereliction and tries to imagine what future use they might have. I will also write a shorter volume, aimed at a more academic audience, that addresses the philosophical aspects of the subject of ruination. Other offshoots of my research will appear in the form of essays and articles in literary journals, art magazines and newspapers, as well as in the form of talks at museums and galleries. I hope that such publications and events will encourage a wider public debate about what is to be done with the ruins of the twentieth century.