Ruins are physical remains, traces of the past, tangible proofs of others activity. That is why they seam so concrete and real. At the same time every ruin contains a lack. It is never complete, full. Thanks to this lack a ruin is open to one's imagination, interpretation. It invites to write its history, to build a discourse around it.
Ruin has to be completed by somebody's creativity, it has to be actualized by it.
This is also why revivals are never repetition of the past. Renaissance art is different than ancient art, Gothic revival in England did not bring to the Middle Ages once again.
There is something fascinating in a ruin. It is so easy to mythologize it, to describe it attributing to the past all the qualities that we fell missing in our present reality.
Looking at the English ruins I was thinking about romantic poets, writers and artists who were wondering between those rocks and dreaming about the return to social solidarity of Middle Ages, about the mystery of Gothic cathedrals and the beauty of true faith.
Poetry of a ruin, York 2011.
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