Votive Offering

/ˈvəʊtɪv/ /ˈɒf(ə)rɪŋ/

Noun

A votive offering or votive deposit is one or more artefacts displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for religious purposes.

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Comments on ‘Rarity’

Votive Offering is a zine which focuses on rarity in urban exploring as a concept, through use of storytelling and contextualisation in example case studies. It contains a collection of a baker’s dozen artefacts – specific artefacts or localities to be found or reached within an overall site. These artefacts are comparatively less travelled within their respective sub-scenes for their own reasons, and can be considered seldom reported from compared to other physically comparable artefacts.

Rarity of ‘place’, outside of an ‘urban exploring politics’ lens, would by default mean somewhere that is simply very uncommon for humans to tread, despite it being a man-made environment. But where is rare for the layman to tread may not be for the urban explorer. Somewhere is rare in urban exploring if the visitor count from the rest of the scene is low. Exclusivity can be argued to bolster value. And urban exploring – by its nature of being a simple gathering based activity – is built upon replication. Only a few don’t get to be replicators at discovering a noteworthy artefact.

The paradox is that the number of artefacts available in urban exploring that have the physical qualities to cause a stir, become earmarked and accepted by the scene as good, or generally impress a wider audience, is fairly low, whilst the number of artefacts available to explore which are off limits to the general public or derelict, is endless. The number of never-before or rarely traversed good artefacts viable for urban exploration is extremely low, whilst the number of never-before or rarely traversed boring and unappealing artefacts is still, basically, ad infinitum. The standard for something to be ‘good’ these days is getting ever higher, and many of those yet to be explored are identified – groomed almost – as having potential for this status long before the first pioneer arrives out of a the growing crowd chomping at the bit for ‘fresh epic’.

Rarity, then, would seem to have good reason to be an attractive quality in urban exploring. Furthermore, it has a wide-reaching audience. For the photographer or the big-game hunter, he has a head-turning photo of something unprecedented, with no competition on the subject matter. For the historian or architect, he has documented heritage that would have otherwise been lost. For the local completionist, he feels like he, and he only, has the keys to his city. And for the technician, he can rest assured he has earned the right to measure his achievements in his field. Rarity bolsters everybody’s causes in urban exploring, and frankly, the only reason one might desire to relieve a n artefact of its rarity is because they know their friends would like to have the opportunity to see its wonders too. The classic car collector wants to acquire a rare model because it’s valuable, and he probably wants to take his friends for a spin in it too. It all makes sense.

But then again, no, it doesn’t, because urban exploring fundamentally lacks a facet that all other collection-based activities – where rarity is also sought – do: ownership. And this is the urban explorer’s bizarre little secret – which all his peers understand but one ‘not a part of this niche’ does not: he feels a primitive sense of emotional ownership towards artefacts which he has no relationship with besides illegal visitation. Spelt out like that it comes across as frankly embarrassing, but somehow it feels natural, and I would challenge any urban explorer to deny a point they felt an emotional reaction to news that their favourite, quiet locality had been barged in on by an undesirable third party.

There is ample evidence to suggest that great swathes of the scene are downright annoyed by a high visitor count to ‘good’ places. On popular forum and social media platforms, a post or discussion about a derelict place in urban exploring considered good, but one which has recently received a deluge of visitors, will be riddled with comments about ‘the tourbus‘. Who’s head should roll at letting the cat out of the bag to the masses about such a place whose previous footfall was controlled to managed portions of the scene, the vandalism and molestation accrued by the interior of the place, and the snowballing number of photos from passengers on ‘the tourbus’ strewn over social media of said place are bound to come up. This phenomenon is often a case of a simple flavour of the month: a ‘good’ place by objective merit which has become easy to access, and is frequently on the lips of the whole spectrum of the scene: “so-and-so said he went here and it was well easy, and look how good it looks”. Others lose rarity, or are graced by ‘the tourbus‘ over a longer period of time, and become some sort of rite of passage. Many of these places are still enjoyable and lovely to visit, of course, but if one were to really write home about them to the sharp end of the scene, one would be mocked. Rather, the much larger, lower class of explorer waxes lyrical and broadcasts about visits to such places as if it has accomplished a remarkable feat.