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︎︎︎The Spaceship Ziggurat and the Ripped Concrete: Digging in the Internet for the Ruins of the Birmingham Central Library︎︎︎

Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Critical and Historical Studies, School of Art & Humanities
At the Royal College of Art (2024)

This is a story about a building.
It was a building that was once made of concrete.
It is a building that has now been demolished.
There were no explosions, fireworks or light shows, just a slow and brutal deconstruction, an unspectacular spectacle.
It is a site of absence. But in the absence there remains possibility. The possibility of regeneration.
This is a story about the future. This is also a story about the past. It is the future in the past and the past in the future, a future future in the past and a past future in the future.
This is a story about movement and mutation. It is about stable and unstable spaces. It is about dislocation and disorientation. It is a forensic fictioning.

Documentation of practice:

︎Phase One Documentation︎︎︎

︎Phase Two Documentation︎︎︎

︎Phase Three Documentation︎︎︎
︎Phase Three (NOIA Magazine pg 38-47) ︎︎︎
︎Phase Three (Fractured Perspectives Script)︎︎︎
︎Phase Three (Concrete RIP book)︎︎︎
︎Phase Conclusion Documentation︎︎︎

Documentation of Viva Exhibition:

Supporting video/moving image work:

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On The Subject of Precarity

4 Google Street View Walks

The Game

Fractured Perspectives

Common Ground

Supporting Links:

︎www.concrete.rip︎︎︎

︎Reform Design Biennale︎︎︎

︎On The Subject of Precarity︎︎︎

︎Hard Blink︎︎︎

︎Fractured Perspectives︎︎︎

︎By The City︎︎︎

︎Common Ground︎︎︎

︎The Spaceship Ziggurat and the Ripped Concrete: Digging in the Internet for the Ruins of the Birmingham Central Library︎︎︎

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Abstract:

This practice-based research project excavates the debris of the Birmingham Central Library out of and through the internet, adopting an essayistic approach that combines images, objects, text and performance alongside archaeological and archival methods in order to reimagine the site as a regenerative pirate spaceship and to reclaim Brutalist architecture as an alien other (or xeno).

The ongoing physical and ideological destruction of Britain’s Brutalist legacy erases any trace of the utopian ambitions imbued within the fabric of such buildings. In an era increasingly defined by post-progressive politics and ideological austerity, I argue that a willingness to speculate on radical alternatives to the way we preserve Brutalism is needed now more than ever if we are to resist what the collective Laboria Cuboniks (2015) refers to as “these puritanical politics of shame—which fetishise oppression as if it were a blessing”. Art historical practices typically regard Brutalism as an architectural vernacular; however, this approach fails to acknowledge that Brutalism was originally conceived of as a methodology (Highmore, 2017). As a result, there exists a gap in knowledge in the way contemporary documentary practices – applied as a performative action – can engage with sites such as the Birmingham Central Library, not as relics of the past but as speculative devices for the future.

The idea of virtual and physical worlds being separate entities is becoming indistinct and the question of which space is ‘more real’ is increasingly blurred. By applying a materialist reading of the Internet as a Heterotopic space, this research responds to Owen Hatherley’s provocation in Militant Modernism (2009) - “what would it mean to look for the future’s remnants?” The Internet becomes an archaeological site within which to excavate the remains of a building that is no longer visible in the ‘real’ world. Brutalism – once the embodiment of technological progress – is (re)located and (re)experienced within the virtual, combining Media Archaeology (Parikka, Ernst) with OOO/New Materialisms (Bryant, Morton, Barad) to reimagine the Birmingham Central Library as a narrative device through which to challenge hegemonic structures, examining the possibilities for re-radicalising spatial practice and revealing a multi-temporal experience of place.

By re-appropriating web-based platforms and technologies, this project offers an alternative documentary vocabulary, exploring how the archaeological possibilities of cyberspace allow us to re-imagine our relationship to sites that have been lost or forgotten and questioning how the distortion and dislocation of Brutalism, experienced via these new technologies, impacts our ability to speculate on the ‘other/xeno’ political and narrative possibilities of place. The research focuses around three phases of production (Phase 1: Deconstruction, Phase 2: Haunting and Phase 3: Reconstruction), drawing on projects completed during the course of this research including Conc(re)te for the REFORM Design Biennale, Common Ground at the New Art Gallery Walsall and By The City for Plan8t as part of a residency in Changsha, China.

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