Things that make stalkers high or humble magic of post-industrial

“Yulia, why do you like to walk around abandoned places?” I asked a photojournalist, as soon as we got through a gap in the fence, which separates from the world the abandoned linoleum factory in the depressed post-industrial area of Odesa.

“Well, there is some kind of a decadent aesthetics in it. I have an entire collection of photos of places similar to this one. This is an adventure, adrenaline, and it allows you to be alone as well. It is that stalker thing.”

Yulia has immense experience of such extreme tourism – she visited Pripyat, cave cities of Cappadocia, remote abandoned villages in Azerbaijan, and God knows what else. Stalker tourism, or urban exploration, is a specific form of semi-legal (sometimes even illegal) tourism, a hermetic subculture, the affiliation to which is kept in quiet, almost morbid enthusiasm, escapism, and romance of industrial zone, which is trending nowadays.

It fascinated us to gaze at the facade of the former factory club with boarded up windows and doors. It is the canonical piece of Stalinist architecture – with columns, portico, balusters on balconies, stars and sheaves of wheat. Through the windows of the second floor, you can see a beam skeleton – the roof’s construction gradually collapses now, the roof itself has long been gone. In the hole of the limestone fence near the club, you can see trees and remnants of the factory buildings and the long pipe.

The more distant our goal, the more attractive it is.

It is impossible to get through the main entrance to the territory – it is under surveillance. Especially, on a deserted street, we still encountered a security guard who came out for a snack. The unexpected appearance of two women in such, to put it mildly, unrespectable neighbourhood, moreover with the camera, couldn’t but catch his attention. After talking about some nonsense, we get the hell out of there. To stay out of sight and in case of emergency to have a convincing legend – that’s what you have to learn here. A guard with a jar of pickled tomatoes disappears behind the shabby door of the former passage room, from which the pregnant cat comes out slowly. And we are looking at the object from the street.

The former factory that couldn’t survive the test of time and collapsed. Together with it, the entire neighbourhood also dilapidated. Silent witnesses of the time are the factory-style dormitory in the style of constructivism, built in the 1930s, people still live there and try to improve their living conditions in all possible ways, an old fence covered with hops, perhaps it was made even before the revolution and centuries-old poplars.

Why have we decided to devote a sunny winter morning searching through devastation, urban exploration and stalker leisure, instead of drinking coffee in a glamorous cafe overlooking the opera house? What makes more or less socialized, self-actualized, decent people to put on safety shoes, plain-looking clothes and wander around abandoned buildings and even entire districts and cities, like ghosts in their free time? To face danger, to challenge nerves, to do good old cruising for a bruising? What kind of such a specific pleasure, they get from walks in destroyed or abandoned buildings that used to serve for industrial, military, public or housing purposes?

We posed these questions to our psychologist friend.

“People are lured by mysteries. A sense of belonging to something majestic, mythical, hidden from the eyes of others. There is a certain superstitiousness, opposition to others – only I understand it, I know the secret; I have access to things that you can’t get. Escape from reality, a way to overcome everyday life. Instead of solving urgent problems and real communication – immersion in the phantoms of the past, communicating with one’s own illusions. Comparing your well-equipped life with what you see in front of your eyes. It’s not so bad, actually, there’re cases that are much worse.”

We climb up the stairs of a strictly-made dormitory built in the ’30s for linoleum factory workers. We want to take pictures of the plant’s complex from above. This dorm was built with the same magnitude as the plant itself. Large windows and high ceilings hint at the fact that this building should be comfortable enough for people. Stairs are covered, of course, with linoleum; on the wall in one place, we notice the remnants of decorative painting. From the upper floor descends a woman with a small child. Apparently, this is their family that owns a room (or flat?), to which you can get through quite neat modern doors. They look so alien to the background of total decay. Like it or not, but the thought “thanks God, I’m not living here” is appearing in your head. Household inconveniences that I am complaining about are insignificant little things in comparison to all this.

From the small window in the front room, you can see the plant’s territory. Bushes and ruins.

Time overcomes everything – all human vanities, ambitions, hopes, and plans. In 1911 the prominent Odesa architect of German descent Beitelspacher had built a linoleum factory with huge workshops, separate railroad and a magnificent gate for two Swedes Vikander and Larsen. Did those Swedes think that in a few years World War I will break out, and then their property will pass to the hands of the Bolsheviks? Did Soviet authorities that built a whole neighbourhood around the Bolshevik linoleum factory with a club, school, shops, residential complexes for engineers and workers, think that the factory won’t survive the economic crisis of the ’90s, will go bankrupt and become a site for filming, and later will collapse completely? Have the inhabitants of a pompous house with columns ever thought, after receiving long-awaited apartments with high ceilings and broad corridors that their district will become a scary story for kids who behave badly?

“Places like this thrill, excite the imagination, encourage you to unravel the mysteries. This is an adventure, an unusual unique experience. Embracing yourself, understanding your own being. Escape from society, communicating with your inner world, solitude.”

It feels like we’re in a parallel dimension. The time has stopped here. The previous era is over, and the other has not yet begun. Can we predict what will happen here in fifty years? Favelas? Scrapyard covered with bushes and reeds, all over which boulders of limestone are scattered? Cemetery? Lake? Dump? Or maybe the pendulum will swing in another direction, and then there will be an autobahn? Residential complex, stadium, airport, well-maintained park? Maybe a new factory that produces robotic housewives? After leaving the dormitory, we continue our journey.

In the end, we find a hole in the fence, through which we get to the territory of the plant. Dangerous pits are filled with dry leaves, open hatches with black stinky water, glass, shrubs, and most importantly, the fear of stumbling upon wild dogs or marginalized people increase the level of adrenaline and expand pupils. However, the common sense keeps you from going too far. What was there before? When was it built and for what purpose? Maybe some unusual story is connected with this place? Would it be interesting to find old photographs or other images of this place, what was it like during its better times? What caused this decay? Is it possible to renovate it, or to make something fundamentally different out of it – a place for military or fire-fighters training, art space or a playground for airsoft?

Strange buildings in the form of connected multi-sided triangles – maybe Warehouses? Workshops? But why exactly this form? The whims of an architect or a functional solution? (There is a version that in the roof the windows are made to let the upper light inside – we couldn’t get there, we didn’t check).

A huge pipe, which we’ve already seen through the fence, the remnants of the workshops, collapse, ruin, and devastation. Now you can only shoot movies about zombie apocalypse or maniacs here. Not for any price you wouldn’t like to be here in the evening.

So, after received dose of existential sorrow, philosophical brainstorming, catharsis and adrenaline, we’re coming back to reality through the abyss behind the garages.

“Stalkering helps you to overcome anxiety. It is way out of the comfort zone, beyond the limits of the conventional perception of the world, the experiencing of the boundary state of existence and non-existence, existential experiences, awareness of ephemerality and fragility of the material world and man-made things in front of time and nature. Everything ends, and it will end. It’s better not to cling to material things because they fade away. And vice versa, it’s better to learn to appreciate what you have. Overcoming fear of ruin, war, devastation – look into your own fear’s eyes. It happens, but it’s not the end, life goes on.”

People also live in such conditions, next to abandoned factories, railways, filtration fields. They hope, fall in love, marry, give birth to children, make dried fruit punch, do their laundry, celebrate birthdays and gossip about neighbours. Human is a creature that adapts to everything. Mechanisms of survival, both physical and mental, are much more powerful than we imagine. We’re capable of surviving cataclysms and win with the help of a will to life. A piece of land, which the fate has made inhabited will be arranged, flowers will be planted, and there will always be a place for a grill where you can sit with friends and chit-chat. On the outskirts of the city, the human genius will fit the boat instead of the roof over the gazebo, paint the pipe that supports it in a crimson color, and put two tram chairs under it, write a birthday greetings on the sewage pipe (wish you the best in life), paint the house in the color of the egg yolk or pink marshmallow. And on the window, there will be a furry kitten.

As if entering another dimension, we find ourselves at a marketplace near the railway crossing, where you can drink espresso for nine hryvnias while the train passes by (the floor in the shop is shaking under your feet and it smell like ten species of fish), you thank the vendor gratefully and return to the usual flow of life. Right until the moment when you want to go on a quest for another adventure.

By Darya Garmyder

Photo by Yulia Kryzhevska