TU Dortmund Psychogeography

My friend Feloris and I were stranded on TU Dortmund’s campus over the weekend. Everything was deserted, except for the wild rabbits that have tunneled under, well, everything, we think. Originally we set out to find a place that would sell us some coffee, but soon the dystopian atmosphere called for some psychogeographical documentation. These pictures are the result of our walk – and the inspiration for a collaborative Weird short story in progress. Please excuse the cellphone cam (my good camera is broken), but I honestly think that the cheaper lens rendered the clouds even more foreboding, etc.
(Warning: LOTS and LOTS of pictures.)

Autoform: Forming Reality

Going Up…

…and Down.

Uniformity.

Ominous Containers.

(72) Autoform.

(18) Autoform.

Achtung!

Solar Panels.

(Did I say foreboding clouds?)

(I did, didn’t I.)

Weird Echo. (Urban Ammonite.)

(& from another angle)

Goethe reveals sinister secrets (and not even between the lines).

(Utopia doesn’t age well.)

Imprisoned.

Moreau.

Ritual Site.

Night Time.

Pickman’s Cellar

My friendly neighbourhood paper wasps have been evicted.

город тумана

This is the best surviving picture of last night’s walk through the fog. Lately, there have been quite a lot of foggy days, and I love taking routes that differ from my everyday commute. If I have the time, I try and get deliberately lost. And I explore this new, other city in which everything is transformed. Far away objects have often vanished completely, while distances between you and the things that remain are impossible to judge. Noises are softened, yet you encounter sudden weird intense bursts of smell: pine resin, petrol, rotting leaves. It’s like walking through a dream, or a surrealist painting. You start to expect some strange beast behind every corner. Maybe my personal favourite city monster, the petricore (that you can recognize by its scent like wet asphalt). But the atmosphere, so radically different from the waking day-city that envelops you on your way to work, is impossible to capture in a photograph.

Don’t look at the wings!

CCTV slake moth

Shoggoth.

Demon-driven tram.

(After almost two years I finally got a halfway decent picture.)

Urban Fossil

fridge.

“the snowflakes we see / are the germ cells of stars and the sea life to be”

Monster on the run / the tables are turning:

Help me, something in the darkness is holding on to my foot!