In support:

Scaffolding,

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, 2004

Exergue:

Scaffolding,

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, 2004 This series of photographs was taken by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin in 2004 in Milo, a small town on the slopes of Mount Etna. In these images, Milo appears to be held together and propped up by hundreds of scaffoldings, in a state of disturbing fragility caused by the earthquake that shook its ground some months earlier. The scaffolds cover facades, occupy streets, stretch and span between buildings. This technique of holding up constructions to prevent them from falling down has a name in Italian: the verb puntellare, which means to prop-up, shore-up, to support. What one sees in Milo, is an agglomeration of buildings being sustained after a dramatic event but also, by repercussion, on the brink of another impending disaster. The presence of the scaffolds also stands, by implication, for that of the earthquake, as it works as a constant reminder of the calamity that took place here, proportionally to it; it stretches this moment of crisis to our present, as a tangible, unwelcome companion to the city. What will happen is still uncertain, as while the scaffoldings supports it in a temporary status quo, Milo – and ourselves- must await for possible settlements and the actual, long-term consequences of the earthquake; the situation with its temporary supports forcing an openness to possible resolutions, indefinitely. The buildings are awaiting restoration, but they might be beyond repair; demolished or replaced, they could stay like this for a very long time. If any of this scaffolding gets removed, they will fall down; the collapse of one building would quite likely weaken its neighboring structures and cause them to fail and cave-in, rows of buildings holding each other as terraces and streets and finally the entire town all function as interdependent structures. The scaffolding appears to be supporting individual buildings, but through them also props up the whole of Milo, and maintains it into the future. Milo’s current state is due to the earthquake occuring at 18:14 local time on Tuesday 29th October 2002, of a magnitude of 4.1 on the Richter scale; that day, Etna’s population had already felt the earth tremble twice, at 11:04 and 16:49, with only slightly lower magnitudes. In the early evening an earthquake takes place with its epicentre closest to the city, just one kilometre west of it. It only lasts but a moment, at this magnitude a few recorded seconds perhaps. The percieved duration of an earthquake can be a lot greater than its actual measurement, depending on one’s distance from its epicentre and the ground’s geology, which can make the earth shake for a much as three times longer when inconsistent. Being inside will also substantially stretch the instant, both in duration and intensity, in proportion to the building’s height and its construction typology. Following this particular moment, only relatively minor damage ensues, cracks appear, things rock, tremble, move, and only in some cases – mostly of poorly constructed buildings- is there any more substantial harm done. Stone buildings are reported to suffer second degree shears, fragments of walls falling down, and roof tiles sliding.

The destructive power of an earthquake closely correlates with its energy release, one and a half times that of its shaking amplitude. For an earthquake like Milo’s, the seismic energy released is comparable in underground explosive force to a small atomic bomb, but gets diffused through the earth’s crust. The Richter magnitude scale measures the shaking amplitude of an earthquake, and is calculated from the largest displacement from 0 at a given point; it then assigns a single number to evaluate it, from a base-10 logarithmic scale, which means that one point increase on its scale designates a ten-fold increase in its shaking amplitude. This number, based solely on the few seconds of actual shaking earth, functions as a universal evaluation of an earthquake’s gravity and its predicted consequences on people’s lives. The measure of 4.1 on the Richter magnitude scale designates what is known as a ‘light earthquake’, meaning only just within a range that is noticeable, with anticipated manifestations including indoor items shaking and general rattling noises, but not much likelihood of significant damage. In the same way that an earthquake stretches in time in relationship to one’s actual situation, its reverberations, both physical and social, psychological and economic, rumble through an uncertain expansive future, the measure of which can only be gauged against the need for support. The scaffolding props up and works to avoid or at least delay the process of failure and collapse; it is erected as a building is still standing, but when one too many cracks have appeared, too many things have moved and opened, when it feels unsafe. The scaffolding works against processes of deterioration and erosion, against tearing, gravity and time, against materials separating themselves from each other and opening up along their joints. The scaffolding works by trying to compensate for the sheer inability of a building structure to move and adapt to the forces around and within it, an impossibility suddenly made visible but yet always present and threatening beneath the surface of things. Every building has a forecasted lifespan, and inscribed in its very construction is the slow process of failure and eventual collapse. The scaffolding thus appears just before irretrievable ruin and catches this moment, stretches it in time, holds it in a state of least resistance. We watch the building and its supports. The scaffolding is made out of odd bits of timber of different thickness, not as much built as put together according to need, expediently; parts are reinforced with additional bracing, the wood looks dirty and a bit wet, unpainted and unprotected, but it touches the building quite delicately and carefully. Puntellare suggests just this touching with the tips (of your fingers?). The timber scaffold doesn’t look like it was built to last, but the building however, in contrast and by consequence seems to have been constructed well into the future, for generations ahead. In opposition to its situation, to the ad-hocness of the scaffolding and all the structures around it, the house looks even finer, its value almost silently now measurable by its being protected and saved by the scaffolding. The house gives every appearance of being old and precious, maybe more so now that it is in danger, so that one gazes at it anew. Paradoxically, the scaffolding introduces a new element: if the building were to be demolished, the scaffolding would fall down too. As the building is being supported, the scaffold seems to recede behind this order of function: while the building is held-up, the supports become more fragile, disposable and transparent the more we look. The supports start disappearing, because in fact they ought not to be there, and will be removed when seismic and structural systems are restored back to balance. The story seems simple enough: support is a simple physical fullfilment dictated by a temporary need. It supplements or enables a situation, and as such, can disappear as quickly as it comes about. It appears that support holds no value other than that of its function -what it is doing for something else- the cost of its labour. But I would like to ask, is this narrative really that simple, and aren’t we missing something? Aren’t we missing, precisely, what this act of supporting might have to say, if we treated it as capable of speaking on its own behalf and not merely on behalf of the building? What would happen if instead of looking at the building we started looking at its supports? How would this image be reconfigured if through an unreasonable change of composition we shifted focus to the least important protagonist in the frame? ”In support” begins with the suspicion that we’re missing

or repressing something important about how support works, and that we must reposition ourselves to find what other story might emerge if we looked the ‘wrong’ way? So we look again, around, behind; at the context, the background. And we first find that Milo is constructed on a ground with very high risk of earthquakes. Etna is a highly active volcano, in an almost constant state of eruption, and regularly flares up and pours rivers of lava that run faster or slower depending on the scale of the eruption. Summit eruptions can be highly explosive and are extremely spectacular, glowing through the night, but are rarely threatening for the inhabited areas around the volcano. However, flank eruptions can occur at substantially lower altitudes, close to or even well within the populated areas around or even on cones of past eruptions. Eruptions are often accompanied by earthquakes and ground deformations or other complex movements of the land. Nonetheless, throughout history, inhabitants have kept on coming back to this region, and cities were often in constant states of destruction and reconstruction. The volcanic earth is very fertile, and supports extensive agriculture, with vineyards and orchards spread across the lower slopes of Mount Etna far into the broad plains of Catania to the south. As instruments of prediction for seismographic activity date almost eighteen hundred years, most eruptions can be detected early enough for people to escape, especially as the lava flows are usually slow. It also appears that earthquakes are and have been so common here that it is usual to have been through many, mostly quite minor ones, that can be slept through, or are detected by the rocking of hanging lights. It also transpires that the number of earthquakes occurring per year in this range of amplitude is estimated at around 6200 worldwide, an impressive average of 16 per day. The movements of the earth here are in tune with the activities of the volcano, which is monitored closely, and is at once feared, loved and of course, respected. The Milo earthquake in fact occured towards the end of a period of eruption, while the lava flow was slowing down, barely moving at 15 metres an hour on that day, gradually filling the uninhabited valleys closest to the summit crater. Generally, the measure of Etna’s activity is felt most immediately through the ash rains rising or decreasing in intensity, covering and entering every house with a fine layer of black dust. The dust is part of everyday life, gets swept away casually and regularly, is commented on, sticks to one’s feet and is always to be found at the bottom of the bed. Milo, it turns out, is not exceptional, neither in its architecture nor its situation. With this in mind it is not unlikely that thirty years from now, these scaffolds might still be there, or that more and more scaffoldings may have been erected, creating a situation in which support would supersede structure. In this context, the notion of temporariness shifts and expands towards unknown scales and dimensions. We also find that ‘Puntellature’ are so common that they are part of the fabric of cities in this region, and even designate a job description. In fact when looking at the photographs again, the pink, yellow, green and blue ribbons on the foreground suddenly stand out, laid over the scaffold, as if they were decorating it. And thus a new question arises, why would the manifestation of imminent danger be decorated? We eventually comprehend that one of the reasons why this status quo might remain for a very long time is that there are large numbers of ancient buildings in Sicily, numerous Baroque towns and churches, endless historical sites and even more that emerge everytime any digging is done. The presence of scaffoldings also stands for the absence of public funding to repair these buildings. It is an absence with many possible causes: complicated and long-winded bureaucracy, slow decision-making processes, corrupt governments, but also the simple fact that Milo is one town amongst many in need of repair, amid a multitude of major architectural sites that make this one less urgent, less valuable, less important. Meanwhile, the presence of the scaffolding changes the jurisdictional nature of the site from a building to a building site, which makes it, for example, tax-exempt. A construction site, or a site ‘in danger’, is also one of the pre-requisites for funding applications, from the European Union for

instance. The scaffold therefore is only at first a physical means to both get to and prop up parts of a building, while it in fact it is the means to access a set of possible futures. In this particular situation, the work of support, taking place in and through complicated bits of scaffolding, is what defines a site’s legal and jurisdictional status, and thus the politics of the space itself. As the scaffolds hold up Milo, lists are drawn up and argued over, applications are considered, funding systems approached, politicians make promises and requests, and the space of the city is managed, classified, bought and sold, protected or exposed. Support undertakes its political performance through the institution of exceptional conditions, even when these are regular and long-term. Far from being supplementary or inessential, support is the very thing that is crucial to this architectural construction, indispensable to how it is to be designated and governed, and its very sustainabilibility is contingent on it; support is the condition of possibility for the making and changing of space, and it structures the relationship between this building and its context, the urban fabric, the socio-political landscape. Slowly deconstructing a prejudice against its apparent fragility and dispensable, functional worth, support reveals itself to be an instrument of evaluation, and is exactly the mechanism that has (as its property) the potential to release value. Support is a moment of pure potential.