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World Heritage and Tourism: , Phenomenology and Accommodating Fringe Groups

Francesca Casey

Introduction

The focus of this issue of furnace is World Heritage and Tourism. A ‘tourist’ has been defined as ‘a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change’ (V. L. Smith, 1989: 1). This paper will adhere to this broad definition in some respects but will seek to problematize it by applying it to a peripheral and unconventional community of interest - Urban Explorers. In doing so, this paper will make an original contribution to World Heritage scholarship by reflecting on World Heritage discourse through the lens of alternative and fringe visitation approaches to ‘top level’ heritage. For the purposes of this discussion, Urban Explorers will be examined as a specific sub-group of ‘tourists’ who forge powerful unauthorised, embodied, and subcultural engagements with the World Heritage Sites they visit. One such case study explored in this paper is Hashima Island, in . Often cited by the Urban Exploring community as a ‘holy grail’ destination, this site has witnessed powerful performative staging of urban explorer subcultural identity. The site’s future management as a World Heritage Site raises both potential opportunities and challenges in accommodating divergent interest groups at sites of international heritage importance.

Urban Exploring, Heritage and Tourism

The term ‘Urban Exploration’ (also ‘UE’ or ‘urbex’) was coined in the 1990s. My own definition would be ‘the recreational practice of gaining entry into various abandoned or out-of-bounds areas/structures’, or ‘the infiltration of mostly urban ‘no-go’ areas as performed by individuals or small groups’. In practice this means everything from the infiltration of sewers or tunnels, to scaling the highest of skyscrapers, and every level in between - it has been stressed that practitioners are ‘exploring the neglected vertical dimensions of the ’ via its hidden access or ‘vanishing points’ (Barkham, 2012). Although termed ‘urban’, and indeed predominantly taking place in , ‘explores’ can also occur in isolated or rural settlements. The explorer Troy Paiva offers his own interpretation of UE as ‘the exploration of TOADS (Temporary, Obsolete, Abandoned, and Derelict Spaces)’ (Paiva et al., 2008: 9), and many 1

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academics have celebrated UE as an opportunity to observe ‘the phenomenology of urban flow’ (Macfarlane, 2013). In a striking heritage parallel, the pursuit of perceived authenticity is also paramount (Prescott, 2011). Although it may seem strange to label such practices ‘tourism’, Emma Fraser has described UE as ‘adventure tourism’, noting that ‘in their ambiguity as not-what-they-were, but not-yet-gone, ruins not only symbolise and signify, they offer an experience to the visitor which is seldom found elsewhere’ (2012: 149).

Explorers often document what they find via blogs and photographs, disseminating these on user-generated community websites such as Urban Explorer Resource and 28dayslater.co.uk. Crucially, true urban explorers are not vandals, they ‘venerate the places they visit…decry tagging (or any other form of ), theft, or damage to property’ and sometimes display ‘an angry nostalgia- a near militant preservationism’ (Bennett, 2011: 426, 432). One celebrated explorer stated ‘ethics don’t disappear on the far side of the “do not enter” sign - if anything, they become more important’ (Ninjalicious, 2005: 21), whilst Deyo and Leibowitz characterise UE as ‘satisfying curiosity in a non-malevolent way’ (2003: 141). Nonetheless, moral issues do surround the practice for many reasons: there is a ‘particular ethical murkiness’ (Garrett, 2013: 7) sometimes needed to gain site entry, alongside issues concerning (non)inclusivity as participants must necessarily be able-bodied, are often white as they are less likely to be profiled by authorities, and are sometimes described as exhibiting a male gaze. UE photographers also face accusations of fetishizing poverty and decline for their own gain, a process sometimes known as ‘Detroitism’/ ‘Detroitsploitation’, after the post-industrial city of Detroit in the USA, a city whose name has, regrettably, become a byword for decline (Leary, 2011).

Scholars of UE, in a heritage context, acknowledge similarities with archaeological modes of enquiry and yet despair of ways to reconcile the practices. Sørensen has noted UE’s resonances with in its ‘inherent trespassing’ and ‘investigation into the remains of the past’ (2007: 89). Rowsdower laments how ‘UE is a legitimate, practical engagement with the past - that said, it would be unlikely for public archaeology to subsume UE without obliterating the practice’ (2011: 2). Sørensen celebrates the mockery that UE makes of heritage listing:

UE ‘challenges both the normative, bourgeois attitude to what represents, culture-historical notions of how ruins of the past are supposed to be organized and experienced, as well as canonized definitions and lists of cultural heritage sites’ (2007: 90).

This stalemate between equally passionate yet diametrically opposed modes of heritage appreciation carries a strong application potential to Laurajane Smith’s Authorised Heritage Discourse theoretical framework (L. Smith, 2006). If heritage lists ‘are entirely self-referential and tend to recruit and recreate themselves in their own image’ (Smith and Waterton, 2012: 161), then ways of visiting these same sites seem also to be limited and replicated in the same image of ‘authorised’ visitation.

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Embodiment, Phenomenology and Performativity

In the context of World Heritage, some commentators understand the very prospect of a list of ‘sites’ as ‘an isotropic homogeneity, rather than a heterogeneous plenitude’ (Trigg, 2009: 96). I argue that one way to address this loss of specificity is by advocating for a renewed embodied focus on this ‘top-rung’ heritage at site-level. I contend that this can be inspired by examination of embodied, subcultural and often unauthorised practices. One explorer, on an ‘eight-foot statue of Lenin at an abandoned Soviet base’, realised that he ‘desired an embodied exchange with a Cold War history’ and that ‘the desire to inscribe yourself into the place becomes unbearable’ (Garrett, 2014: 61 & 51). Others also stress the embodied nature of the practice: UE ‘represents a remarkable hands-on approach to what may be termed a quasi-academic study of a primary phenomenological field of enquiry, namely the bodily encounter with the material world’ (Sørensen, 2007: 90). Other examples of unauthorised embodied subcultural engagements with heritage space include skateboarding, and parkour.

Explorations often take place at the local level and participants frequently display a performative delight in embodying space. As Ninjalicious states, ‘exploring abandoned sites provide[s] the best and most interactive museum of industrial archaeology and local history you’ll ever find’ (2005: 88). Participants scout, enter, traverse, mount, photograph, document, disseminate, and discuss the legacy they encounter, in a manner at once different and the same as conventional heritage visitation/tourism. Garrett and Hawkins discuss a process of ‘edgework’, whereby ‘phenomenological experiences of high risk activities… [enact] a bodily doing that sees individuals and collectives approaching various (material and immaterial) edges and boundaries…the adrenaline rushes, the pumping endorphins, and the sore, cut and bleeding bodies…bring to the fore…energy and matter in a constant state of composition’ (2013: 7-8). Hawley believes that rather than condemn these activities for having the capacity to ‘violate and to transcend moral constraint’, we should note that deviance ‘may be a reaching for exquisite possibilities and can certainly represent something transcendent’ (2010: 233).

UE has often been discussed as the heir of Psychogeography, particularly Guy Debord’s 20th century practice of exploratory ‘dérive’ or urban ‘drifts’/walks, as practiced by the flâneur/ ‘saunterer’ figure and members of the Situationist International, who ‘argue[d] that society consists largely of passive spectators and consumers of packaged experiences, and suggest that individuals shake up this state of affairs by engaging in creative play’ (Ninjalicious, 2005). For Situationists, the classification of ‘World Heritage’ visitation would almost certainly appear as a ‘packaged experience’. Certainly, for an undertaking ultimately concerned with bounded sites, World Heritage as identified in the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention (and as subsequently studied) pays surprisingly little attention to how these sites are physically or phenomenologically (Merleau-Ponty; Heidegger) experienced. Admittedly, UE constitutes an extreme example, as the practice is so embodied as to physically endanger the human form.

Significantly, the UE motto is oft cited as ‘take only photos, leave only footprints’- the same maxim as the environmental organisation, the Sierra Club (Garrett, 2014). Yet to

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date there has been relatively little attention paid to these engagements and interactions with established UNESCO World Heritage Sites ‘from below’ (Robertson, 2012), perhaps because they often take deviant but not necessarily destructive forms (Hawley, 2010). These subcultural pursuits are currently viewed with suspicion at best, and often with prohibition and even prosecution. I wish to posit that they frequently exhibit a profound alternative engagement with heritage, and an admirable embodied/phenomenological approach to sites. This interactive approach too often tends to become overpowered elsewhere by international bureaucracy and in the act of high-level listing, which often results in an unfortunate ‘to be seen and not touched’ tone.

Urban Explorer Texts

I feel it is apt to sample some attitudes of explorers themselves. Remarkably, there exist a handful of texts with elements that bear a striking resemblance to certain aspects of the World Heritage Convention, or even refer to World Heritage Sites or the UN:

 ‘A Jinx mission [UE subgroup active in New York in the 1990s] has few rules, but keeping the site pristine is one of them. This is a city, not a nature preserve; it is nevertheless a living city and subject to erosion. Future explorers deserve to discover this place and perceive the unbroken links to its origin. What we miss, they might find’ (Deyo & Leibowitz, 2003: 22).

 ‘We live in an unexpected golden age for dereliction… [I delight in] exploring those archaeologies so particular to our own point in history’ (Paiva & Manaugh, 2008: 7).

 ‘The Forth Rail Bridge stretches 2500 metres across the Firth of Forth. It’s not a great distance to walk, but it is a great distance to traverse across steel beams while trespassing on National Rail property, not to mention a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The plan was mental and everybody loved it’ (Garrett, 2014: 92).

 ‘Although there is a strict Jinx policy against agents writing graffiti during expeditions, we take an archaeologist’s view of the elaborate pieces we hope to see today. The most impressive pieces are a key element of the urban landscape and worthy of our notice and study’ (Deyo & Leibowitz, 2003: 34).

 ‘Since I swore no oath to uphold the sacred traditions of the Authorized, I feel no qualms about hereby authorizing all who read this article to access any area which they feel like accessing. Now you’re authorized’ (Ninjalicious, 1996-2005).

The invocation here of respect, (un)authorization, living systems, urban heritage cities, future generations, preservation, rules, archaeology, study and (cultural) landscapes uses terminology also very often found in heritage discourse.

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However, this may be where the similarities end. Elsewhere, direct antagonism towards authority is displayed. Deyo and Leibowitz even mount a sustained attack on the philosophy of the U.N., via an anecdote of how they attempted to hang an unauthorised flag on the New York Headquarters building:

The United Nations has amply proved the value of its utopian promise. Today’s peaceful, lawful, progressive world, where violence and poverty exist only in history books, is largely the result of the United Nation’s efforts. How many take the time to let them know how grateful they are? We couldn’t wait to let them know. So today we have come to hang the Jinx flag, right on their goddam front lawn (2003: 108)

Although not specifically an attack on UNESCO or World Heritage, this demonstrates a pessimism and cynical scorn for an international ‘utopian promise’. There appears to be a suspicion of metanarratives and international organisations. The text later mounts a defence against perceived attacks on member states: ‘the U.N. seeks to establish international norms…it attempts to assert sovereignty over national governments and create a central authority over the world’ (2003: 118). Interestingly, this mirrors ‘from below’ exactly the same accusations that have been levelled against the U.N. ‘from above’ at the highest official and academic levels (Frey & Steiner, 2011).

Case Study

Hashima is a tiny isle of 16 acres lying about 15 kilometres from the city of Nagasaki in southern Japan and forms part of the ‘Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution’ World Heritage Site. The Mitsubishi Company ran the island as a ‘kind of benevolent dictatorship’ in the form of a mine until the coal ran out in 1974, precipitating abandonment (Burke-Gaffney, 2002). The relatively prosperous island once held ‘the highest population density on earth’ with ‘an incredible 1,391 per hectare for the residential district’ (ibid). Hashima was inscribed on the World Heritage List for its remaining industrial mining qualities in 2015, 41 years after its abandonment, and is currently in an extreme state of decay. Tourism to the island in the form of cruise- and-land tours has increased greatly in recent years, partly as a result of a fictionalized version of the island starring in the 2012 Bond film, Skyfall (Hashimoto & Telfer, 2016: 114). However, unofficial illegal urban explorers continue to ‘sn[eak] across the waters on fishing boats to document their own fascination with the place’ (Meredith, 2014). Hashima is a prime example of a site that urban explorers would urge us to ‘accept the loss of… [losing] abandoned places [is] a paradoxical way to preserve their authenticity’ (Arboleda 2016: 378).

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Fig. 1: View of Hashima (Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajari/16362681859, Author: ajari CC BY 2.0.)

Whether visitors to Hashima arrive officially or unofficially, there exists a fascinating and dangerous gap between the site’s statement of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’ as justified to UNESCO, which regards tangible industrial ruins, and the way that the site is perceived more generally, as a transient, romantic, modern ruin. In terms of World Heritage, the island was inscribed solely for its industrial qualities, and yet the below draft of ‘significance’ was crafted mainly to ‘provide the foundation of what information is provided to tourists’ (Hashimoto & Telfer, 2016: 11). The tourists are attracted to the island for reasons mostly acknowledged as being based on ‘decay’:

‘the Value of Hashima Mine: “The Island that passes down the story from the birth of coalmining industry to decay”

1. Coal-mining heritage site where one can see the birth of the mine, closure of the mine and the process of decay.

2. Technology that deepened the under-water mining shafts which produced the best quality coal.

3. The mining island where extremely high population density living space, which has no rival in the world, meets industrial production sites.

4. Accumulation of historical fortified concrete buildings and their decaying conditions, which can contribute to scientific evidence.’ (Hashimoto & Telfer, 2016: 11, emphasis added)

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I argue here that the World Heritage Site inscription is inappropriate as ‘although only the port and primary mining facilities on the island were inscribed on the World Heritage List, the city of Nagasaki believes the apartment buildings are key to the island’s appeal and plans to preserve them as well’ (Japan Times, 2015). As a result, Nagasaki City will have to emphasise that the concrete apartment buildings ‘have historical value for telling the true story of a lifestyle and environment in the pursuit of coal mining work in a harsh natural environment’ independently of the World Heritage narrative (Nagasaki City, 2015: 1707). Indeed this inattention to the ‘human story’ of World Heritage Sites and the preferential treatment of tangible evidence over lived experience is a strong criticism of the World Heritage Convention more generally. In this mismatch we witness the dangerous potential for stalemate or ‘a critical lapse between the inscription and management of the site’, as at Liverpool World Heritage Site (Rodwell, 2014: 303). When increased tourism (partly resultant from amplified media exposure) almost entirely at odds with the Statement of Outstanding Universal Value is added to the mix, the potential for this ‘critical lapse’ becomes even greater.

Commentators note that after the recent introduction of tourism at Hashima ‘there are cases where tourists have ventured off regulated paths and posted videos to the Internet of themselves walking though the ruined landscape…other on-line videos have been made through the use of drones with cameras’ (Hashimoto & Telfer, 2016: 10). This has led ICOMOS to consider that ‘the main potential threats to the property are unregulated visitors…together with the lack of conservation’ (2015: 97). The desire to capture images and videos for dissemination on the web appears to be a main motivator for both official and unofficial visitors, and appears to have more to do with a search for entropic decay than a pursuit of outstanding industrial relics.

In undertaking to incorporate Hashima into the UNESCO framework (probably one of the most deteriorated modern monuments it has ever ratified), the Nagasaki Government has committed itself to a difficult task. How can a site which ‘must remain rejected to hold meaning’ be conserved when ‘stabilization would affect [its] symbolism as discard[ed] from modernity’ (Rowsdower, 2011: 10)? How can we square a preservation effort with a site of tourism visitation in which ‘exploration is actually practiced in order to experience that which has already been destroyed or fallen into decay’ (Sørensen, 2007: 89)? I argue here that part of the site’s significance arises from the engagement of the UE community, and that insensitive conservation is likely to destroy this link.

A radical compromise would be for the conservation discourse of UNESCO to expand to include the appreciation of entropic decay so valued by the UE community. As explored earlier, this has simultaneous stark similarities and differences with traditional heritage visitation ethics. The explorer Paiva cites wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy and aesthetics of transience that perceives beauty as ‘imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete’ (Koren, 2008: 7). It is clearly impractical to suggest that all the hundreds of buildings on Hashima be restored. Future interpretation could — perfectly appropriately — consider the island as a World Heritage level example of wabi-sabi beauty.

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Admirably, however, management of Hashima has taken into account this stalemate between preservation and entropy. Hashimoto & Telfer discuss the ‘treatment’ of the ruins as World Heritage:

The Ministry of Culture has been consulting with Nagasaki City on the separation of zoning on Hashima into (1) preservation areas and (2) “exposure to elements for natural decay” areas. The Ministry has expressed concerns about the potential unexpected conservation challenges on Hashima, which the existing Heritage Protection Law had never previously encountered’ (2016: 10).

This acknowledgement of Hashima’s impasse is laudable. By contemplating allowing exposure to decay, the committee makes a pioneering step towards broadening out the styles of conservation pursued under the World Heritage Convention. This is beneficial as it is not merely ‘urban explorers [but also] other scholars who would like to observe the mutations of [heritage] through time’ (Garrett, 2010: 1458). It has also been suggested that ‘to accept the loss of abandoned places’ is ‘a paradoxical way to preserve their authenticity’, especially in the face of ‘touristification’ or commodification (Arboleda, 2016: 378).

The unique status of Hashima’s offers us an occasion to debate the role of preservation under the World Heritage Convention afresh. The decision to zone Hashima could cynically be read as a cost-saving exercise. However, I believe it is an acknowledgement that the traditional ‘World Heritage Gaze’ theorised as Smith’s Authorised Heritage Discourse is not the only option for a successful and authentic treatment of heritage, even (or especially) at the highest level. The Hashima site is small enough and in such an advanced state of decay that it appears to be one of the most opportune chances to pilot a different conservation/tourism approach that a site within the UNESCO framework will have. It remains until the end of 2017 to be seen whether this innovative approach will be allowed (Japan Times, 2015).

Conclusion

This paper has examined the performative and embodied staging of subcultural identities at World Heritage Sites, and advocates for an increased capacity for embodied experience of them. It also warns against the dangerous ‘critical lapses’ first identified by Rodwell (2014) that can occur when tourism at WHSs is at odds with statements of Outstanding Universal Value. By examining the extreme subculture of UE, this paper analyses an embodied touristic practice that, in a striking parallel to the World Heritage system itself, also relies inherently on experience of place, and employs an international outlook and networking systems in order to fulfil a common goal.

This paper’s focus was partly in reaction to the fact that much World Heritage visitation analysis focuses on intellectual engagements with sites, especially cultural sites, and appears to neglect consideration of embodied encounters. As Adie and Hall noted as late as 2016, ‘there has been little attention up until this point on those who specifically visit World Heritage Sites’ (2016: 12), let alone how they visit them. Given the fact, however, that World Heritage visitors have overwhelmingly been identified 8

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as ‘highly educated’ (ibid), it seems reasonable to assume that managers of World Heritage Sites are striving for purely intellectual engagements with their sites. Whilst this passionate promotion of intellectual stimulation is of course laudable, it could be seen as shutting down other ways of experiencing World Heritage Sites. This paper has attempted to combat this by employing the critical lens of phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), which involves ‘paying careful attention to people’s actual practices…as part of their ‘being-in-the-world…as well as trying to convey how they feel about it’ (MacDonald 2013: 82).

Dylan Trigg is of the opinion that what emerges from ‘a sense of embodiment and spatiality’ is ‘a tremendous faith in the power of place as a source of unity’ (2009: 90). In an increasingly virtual world, this powerful ‘faith in the power of place’ via visitation is surely a brilliant opportunity for tourism at World Heritage Sites to develop.

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Author

Francesca Casey graduated in English Literature from the University of York in 2015, and in MA World Heritage Studies from the University of Birmingham in 2016. Her academic interests include 'alternative' engagements with heritage, such as those enacted through Geocaching or Urban Exploration.

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