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 ................... With redevelopment imminent, I took the opportunity to return to St. _____ - once a youth treatment centre, but now simply an impediment to luxury housing. It has been almost a year since my last visit, but little appears to have changed. A few more broken windows, an accretion of dead birds on the upper floors – but nothing of any significance. Its singular atmosphere remains – cobalt skies and the autumn sun doing little to offset its bleakness.  ................... ...................  ................... I focused this time on the prison’s periphery – the administration block and social centre. Left untended, both have largely been reclaimed by the surrounding woodland (footpaths consumed, windows enshrouded; it is as if they have risen through the forest floor). ...................  ................... With the administration block unyielding, however, I spent most of my visit in the social centre – an almost windowless structure to the side of the approach road. Large partitions divided the floor space, while at the rear stood what I assume was once an altar. [Bizarrely, straw and manure lined the floor in some rooms, the remainder stripped bare. On the stage lay a government booklet on violence, but there were few other clues to the centre’s usage. ]  ................... ...................  ................... The history and experiences of inmates must have been horrific; and yet all I was able to sense was absence - the population an undifferentiated mass. Viewed simply as places – derelict, forgotten, silent - these buildings are extraordinary; but with no human traces to cleave to, the desolation eventually becomes too much. (I remember feeling much the same at Cane Hill – my first visit all-encompassing, my last spent entirely in occupational therapy, knee-deep in patient artwork).1  ................... ..There is something to be said for revisiting the same locations - a means of charting their decay as well as any changes in one’s own sensibilities. In the case of St. ____, for instance, I found myself more responsive, more distressed - the prison’s history increasingly difficult to comprehend. [At St._____, the dividing line is violence, brutality – something far beyond the compass of my own experience (unlike mental illness)]  ................... ...................  ................... ...................  ................... Indeed, St ____ serves as a fascinating counterpoint to psychiatric hospitals. With asylums, there are always concessions to the outside world – be it geographical prominence, the abundance of windows - but here separation is absolute. A ten-metre metallic fence and the pervasiveness of razor wire utterly reject the idea of assimilation or contact. The cord with the outside world is cut completely.  ................... ...................  ................... ................... 1. As with Cane Hill, the obvious analogue is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (surely the greatest exploration film there is). Ostensibly, I venture in search of something - be it history, photographs – but each time the journey is largely internal (while not quite descending into solipsism, the lack of human traces invariably forces my gaze inward – something I despise but seem powerless to resist) ................... ................... |
.....#7 - Appendix: Tilt [Autumn 2006]