Ruins and the hyper-sensorium: embodied spatial engagement and other neurodivergent practices in urban exploration

Abstract

Urban exploration is a contemporary practice of accessing and documenting abandoned or off-limits places. In these borderlands of modernity, the rules and norms of mainstream society may seem suspended. Previous literature frames such marginal incursions as leisure, play, and subcultural practice; even as transgression and social deviance. However, this paper considers how other practitioners may be driven by more phenomenological urges, as they pursue uniquely embodied interactions with history. We propose that entanglements might be found between the practice of urban exploration, and neurodivergence. To that end, we present the concept of hyper-sensorium to describe the phenomenon of sensory extra-stimulation through the method of urban exploration among neurodivergent people. Authored by two neurodivergent researchers with experience in urban exploration practices, the paper uses autoethnography and panethnography as methods, and draws together scholarship in heritage, geography, and neurodiversity studies; to propose a novel model of embodied spatial engagement, describing the practices of a marginalized group of people in marginal places.