The Refreshing Art of Urban Decay
The performance artist Ross Lipman likes to call what he presents "non-filmic cinema." The Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker practices the form in his evolving road show, "Report From the Ghost City," which brings together like-minded artists in different cities to explore themes of urban phenomenology in a mixed-media context.
Previously staged in Los Angeles and San Francisco, "Ghost City" arrives at Anthology Film Archives on Monday as a collaboration between Mr. Lipman's Disembodied Theater Corporation and the New York-based Ars Subterranea — fellow travelers in the ambiguous realms of contemporary civic ruins.
Mr. Lipman's piece, "No Way Out but Onward," relates a 2004 journey along the High Line, the abandoned, elevated freight rail on the west side of Manhattan that is now being developed into a park. In Mr. Lipman's performance, which is augmented with visual projections and a musical score, a small group of friends ascends to the High Line but finds that getting back to street level is more risky and difficult than imagined.
"The worst thing that was going to happen was that we were going to be arrested," he said, "and that wasn't likely. What's fascinating is how your mind deals with the situation." Mr. Lipman's vivid narration captures the wonder, and trepidation, of moving through an urban space that feels utterly forgotten.
"It's like an autonomous zone, where there are no clear lines of authority: a wilderness in the city," he said. "And yet, we're walking past people's windows, literally within 10 feet of someone's home." Some of that same magic is what appeals to Julia Solis, a guiding force in Ars Subterranea. Since 2002, the group has led public tours of urban ruins — safe and legal excursions — such as the Jersey City Medical Center, the City Hall subway station, and the Bronx Borough Courthouse. These explorations have not been focused on historical scholarship, but rather a kind of poetic resonance.
"These spaces are a really fertile ground for narrative," Ms. Solis said. She will preside over a portion of the show called "Dispatches From the Wasteland," offering three short imaginary stories set inside abandoned mental hospitals. Some of Ms. Solis's work has been turned into graphic novel form and will be published by the Furnace Press. Excerpts will be shown in slide form at Anthology, including "Funeral Play," which took shape after one of Ms. Solis's spooky excursions. "It's kind of a dreamlike narrative inspired by a hospital bed in a small town in Illinois," she said. "It's a quest for someone who died in that bed."
Not everything Ars Subterranea touches is strictly spectral. Sometimes Ms. Solis likes to organize scavenger hunts, such as one she hosted not long ago in the City Hall subway station. Since the attendees knew it was the first subway station in Manhattan, the point wasn't to replicate Wikipedia. "It's more fun to make a big riddle and have everyone wander around, looking at stuff and becoming acquainted with it."
Such happenings, publicized through word of mouth and e-mail lists, reach capacity quickly. "There's a lot of people interested in this now," Ms. Solis said. "When I first started out, people thought it was freaky."
It may not be a trend, exactly, but New York as a future ruin thrives in the popular imagination. The Will Smith science fiction film "I Am Legend" posits a post-apocalyptic city rapidly going to seed, as does Alan Weisman's best-selling book, "The World Without Us." There's a fascination here that is much more immediate than a postcard of Pompeii. It may also serve as a spiritual counterbalance to the explosion of real estate development in Lower Manhattan and along the Brooklyn waterfront, where many urban ruins have sat.
"Because it is in the recent past, it serves as a reminder that everything we're living in now will be a ruin one day," Mr. Lipman said. "We're all just passing through."
Monday at 7:30 at Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Ave., between 1st and 2nd streets, 212-505-5181).
