{"id":1942,"date":"2014-09-01T15:46:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T22:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.org\/weblog\/?p=1942"},"modified":"2014-09-07T22:54:25","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T05:54:25","slug":"a-lark-ascending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/?p=1942","title":{"rendered":"a lark ascending…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"zone<\/a>

zone of alienation<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Templehof<\/a>

zone of regeneration<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

In Tarkovsky\u2019s 1979 film Stalker<\/i><\/a>, a mysterious guide leads a couple of characters known only as \u2018the writer\u2019 and the \u2018professor\u2019 into a post industrial \u2018zone of alienation\u2019 where it is promised one\u2019s innermost wishes can\u00a0be granted and where the rules of physics no longer apply. The \u2018Zone\u2019 is completely abject, a place\u00a0of weeds, broken machinery and the ruins of factories and yet it is hauntingly beautiful in a way that is triggered (perhaps) by our deep yet\u00a0unconscious familiarity with such landscapes\u00a0\u2013the places Walter Benjamin<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0called\u00a0the optical subconscious<\/i>, the quotidian zones\u00a0in which we are so fully at home we don\u2019t even realize we live\u00a0there.<\/p>\n

These aren\u2019t the\u00a0iconic,\u00a0aspirational landscapes of snow-capped mountains, palm fringed coral beaches and\u00a0glittering urban skylines\u00a0\u2013the stuff of\u00a0screen savers and photo murals\u00a0in tacky restaurants,\u00a0but rather the prosaic localities we continuously experience,\u00a0perceiving\u00a0them peripherally, from\u00a0 the corners of our eyes\u00a0yet\u00a0rarely explicitly\u00a0acknowledging. The French term \u2018terrain vague\u2019<\/em> comes closest to\u00a0the way these places feel\u00a0and they\u00a0might take the form of a trash-strewn railway embankment\u00a0or\u00a0an abandoned car park with rank vegetation coming up\u00a0through the broken pavement or perhaps one of those\u00a0forlorn, zones of contamination\u00a0we refer to as brownfields<\/a>, which have become the global hallmark\u00a0of industrial decline.<\/p>\n

I think back on my Amtrak journeys through the rust belt of America, marvelling\u00a0at the Piranesian grandeur of once opulent railway stations left to crumble\u00a0at the trackside, the ruined vaults now\u00a0sheltering only\u00a0birds which dart in and out\u00a0of the shattered arrays of windows. The\u00a0train keeps chugging\u00a0lethargically (it is Amtrak after all, itself a symbol of decline in American technological ambition) through dour,\u00a0neglected\u00a0expanses, prosaic, ugly,\u00a0endless \u2013you can’t\u00a0really call it \u00a0\u2018countryside’ exactly\u2013\u00a0but for the occasional scruffy woodlot and oily wetland which\u00a0passes between the wrecking yards, quonset huts and derelict factories. This is (as Deleuze might call it<\/a>) a \u2018striated\u2019 landscape that interleaves\u00a0the decaying residue of a once prosperous age of\u00a0material production\u00a0with a resurgent,\u00a0weedy nature\u00a0\u2013an ecology of discard, a\u00a0\u2018zone of alienation\u2019 where anything might appear\u2013 a muddy\u00a0field\u00a0strewn with \u00a0bone white shards of dishes\u00a0and upturned toilet\u00a0bowls,\u00a0the twisted wreckage of a carnival rides left over from, what? A tornado? Perhaps, even\u2013though I did not experience it\u2013the fulfillment of one\u2019s deepest wishes\u2026<\/p>\n

But is this not the state of the world as we all now know it? It\u2019s the Anthropocene<\/em>, baby, and collectively we\u2019ve chewed up\u00a0every inch of biosphere; extirpating, contaminating and cultivating ourselves into this, the global \u2018Nature 2.0\u2019 reality, where even the unfolding\u00a0of weather and the chemistry of the oceans have become extensions, artifacts of human existence. So past the point of no return are we that we might as well discard nostalgic notions of\u00a0\u2018wilderness\u2019 and adopt a new, Anthropocenic grammar, already envisioned\u00a0by the likes of \u017di\u017eek<\/a> and Morton<\/a>, which more\u00a0aptly describes the hybridized, pervasively\u00a0humanized\u00a0environment in which we now live.<\/p>\n

\"terrain<\/a>

terrain vague<\/p><\/div>\n

Our planet has essentially become one, big\u00a0ruderal<\/em><\/a> ecology (from the Latin \u2018rudus\u2019 meaning rubble), characterized by the large-scale extinction of species\u2013passenger pigeons, big cats, rhinos\u2013as well as entire ecosystems\u2013Madagascar, the Arctic, coral reefs. And yet there is\u00a0a curious,\u00a0parallel process of adaptive evolution occurring\u00a0in the disturbance ecologies and\u00a0debris fields (called anthromes)<\/a>\u00a0we \u00a0leave\u00a0in our wake.<\/p>\n

At\u00a0Chernobyl\u00a0(one of the greatest\u00a0ecological and social messes we have ever been responsible for,\u00a0\u00a0a\u00a0byword for lethal, irreparable\u00a0contamination and epic technological failure)\u00a0some<\/em>\u00a0bird species\u2013and by no means all of them, as many kinds there have significantly declined\u2013but certain<\/em> bird species <\/a>seem to be surviving by evolving a tendency to produce more cancer-fighting antioxidants which help\u00a0resist the effects of the pervasive radiation. Scientists are calling this \u201cunnatural selection\u201d and it is already driving\u00a0evolutionary change.<\/p>\n

\"tumblr_m4b28zBV8K1qahgvlo1_1280\"<\/a>

canid hyperorganism<\/p><\/div>\n

In much of eastern North America, the wolf was largely wiped out\u00a0during European colonization but it \u00a0has recently come back not as\u00a0a wolf exactly, but a kind of hyperorganism\u2013<\/em><\/a>a three way hybrid between wolf, dog and coyote that pushes the boundaries of what it even means<\/em> to be a species. With the precipitous decline of the ancestral wolf,\u00a0an ‘eye of the needle’ effect ensued in which wolf\u00a0genetics\u00a0became\u00a0more ‘soluble,’ more open to other singularities and contagions, a\u00a0necessary precondition for the evolution of a new, protean canid, able to\u00a0prosper in\u00a0the\u00a0niche now available for some\u00a0canny predator able to exploit\u00a0the pervasively humanized and ecologically degraded environment of\u00a0second growth forest and exurban sprawl\u2013the kind of places that are\u00a0an anathema\u00a0to the so-called \u2018pure\u2019 wolves of the\u00a0primeval wilderness but which offer\u00a0abundant prey resources\u00a0of\u00a0lawn-fed deer and genetically moronic pets. Enter the ‘Coywolf’ <\/a>or Eastern coyote<\/a>. They might be a product of ‘unnatural’\u00a0selection,\u00a0but they sure\u00a0are hungry!<\/p>\n

Such novel recombining is occurring\u00a0at a\u00a0multi-species level\u00a0too, with entirely new hyperecologies<\/em> evolving\u00a0as weedy, native species commingle with invasive exotics, all of them jostling and repositioning themselves into configurations\u00a0that never would have existed \u2018naturally\u2019 but which now comprises recognizable and widespread landscapes\u00a0of brownfield savannah and emergent, wasteland forest that are found throughout\u00a0the world in pretty much any place we\u00a0have exploited\u00a0and then turned our back on. Many of these organisms are the hardy cosmopolitan nomads we are all used to seeing, such as tree of heaven<\/a> (also known as the \u2019garbage palm\u2019), black locust<\/a>, pigeons and rats, but perhaps surprisingly these unprepossessing assemblages\u00a0can support a diverse array of other species, some exceedingly rare, which hail from habitats like\u00a0gravelly steam banks and dry heaths now largely obliterated from a hinterland dominated by chemical intensive farming and vast, ecologically sterile acreages\u00a0of housing developments\u00a0and big box stores.<\/p>\n

In the UK, where humanized landscapes are particularly well studied, it is estimated that up to 15%<\/a> of the nationally rare insects and spiders are dependent on brownfields for their survival as do several species of reptiles, orchids and other rare plants.<\/p>\n

I was delighted last March to visit the grounds of the now disused Templehof Airport in Berlin, which as a result of citizen pressure has been set aside as a kind of publicly accessible ruderal ecology park. Here one is greeted by the incongruous site of windsurfers careening along miles of abandoned runways while skylarks<\/a> hover high over vast swathes of tawny grassland, singing and establishing territory in their annual rite\u00a0of spring.<\/p>\n

Along with a surprising diversity of meadow dependent birds – wheatears<\/a>, shrikes, whinchats<\/a> and so on, 236 bee and wasp species have been recorded on the grounds, more than 40 of them endangered or near extinction<\/a>, particularly those dependent on the open, sandy microhabitats that have all but vanished in the over-managed environs of the countryside.<\/p>\n

\n
\"gestapodig\"<\/a>

gestapo prison excavations<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"airfield<\/a>

airfield meadows<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

This wonderful interleaving, this striation, this \u2018to-ing and fro-ing\u2019, between architectural ruin and ecological renewal is to my mind a tremendously optimistic model for the future of parks in general and for our appreciation of landscape\u00a0as a whole and it is in promoting this aesthetic that Berlin is very much at the fore. The\u00a0Templehof park doesn’t try to paper over\u00a0its\u00a0problematic Nazi past\u00a0but lets us grapple\u00a0with it\u00a0by preserving\u00a0the\u00a0forbidding Fascist architecture and letting us watch\u00a0archeological excavations of Gestapo prisons and slave labour camps taking place\u00a0on on its grounds.<\/p>\n

At the same time we are offered profound \u00a0hope by witnessing\u00a0innate\u00a0processes of ecological and cultural regeneration get\u00a0encouraged, not in an over-planned or\u00a0commercialized way, but\u00a0from the ground up, <\/i>in a way that is distinct from the banal,\u00a0generic late capitalist aesthetic that so frequently defines urban renewal initiatives elsewhere. By being leaving it alone, Templehof is able to renew\u00a0itself.<\/p>\n

Though the global\u00a0ecological crisis is deep and inestimably tragic, we can\u00a0perhaps allow ourselves to\u00a0cautious celebrate\u00a0the evolution\u00a0of a new kind of nature, a ruderal<\/em> nature, where\u00a0kestrels soar across the\u00a0heat haze of\u00a0abandoned\u00a0runways that are slowly becoming\u00a0 encrusted with lichens and grasses\u00a0and where rare wild flowers can find a toehold among the rubble of some of history\u2019s worst crimes against humanity.\u00a0 The sky is filled with the coloured sails of paragliders and a bumblebee is\u00a0making\u00a0its first foray into the vast warm vault\u00a0of\u00a0another spring.<\/p>\n

\n
\"zone

sailing the runways<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"skylarks<\/a>

skylarks nest here<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Tarkovsky\u2019s 1979 film Stalker, a mysterious guide leads a couple of characters known only as \u2018the writer\u2019 and the \u2018professor\u2019 into a post industrial \u2018zone of alienation\u2019 where it is promised one\u2019s innermost wishes can\u00a0be granted and where the rules of physics no longer apply. The \u2018Zone\u2019 is completely abject, a place\u00a0of weeds, broken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,55,110,22,8,105,3,111],"tags":[121,131,125,119,7],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-birds","category-brownfields","category-cities","category-environment","category-extinction","category-plants","category-ruderal-ecology","tag-architecture","tag-brownfields","tag-cities","tag-environment","tag-ruderal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1971,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions\/1971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}