“Detroit Digital – On Tourists in the Apocalypse”
Article by Marcel O´Gorman, on the abandoned city of Detroit and its reflections on the internet, published on CTheory.
www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=586#_ednref9
“We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.”
Henry Ford
The physical abandonment of the city is evident, even the dead won´t stay. At least 500 graves are moved from the centre to the suburbs each year. At the same time, the area becomes a freehaven for new music scenes and youth culture, a stage for DJ´s like Plastikman and DJ Spooky. As the body of the city decays, its digitized version is growing fast. Bit by bit, traditional grafitti is replaced by virtual tagging. The question is raised wether bloggers can save Detroit:
“Detroit-oriented blogs fail to demonstrate a democratic move toward taking care of the “city problem.” For every well-intentioned, well-researched blog about Detroit’s trials and tribulations (e.g., http://detroitblog.org), there are a dozen urbex blogs that portray Detroit as the set of Blade Runner (e.g., http://fuckingblahhdetroit.endlessapathy.net). What could potentially be a community of individuals working collaboratively to give a city a voice and restore its vitality, is overrun by a network of isolated, narcissistic individuals shouting, “Look at me! Look at this dangerous place I visited! Make me your hero!”
