Urbex: An exploration of industrial plant by Lana Sator

A very interesting post on urbex, entitled Sneak Inside a Russian Rocket Factory, was published in the issue 05.12 of the British edition of Wired. Lana Sator, aged 23, blogger, is among these courageous urban explorators who defy authorities to explore abandoned, obsolete, post-industrial places.

Energomash Plant, 2011. Photo © Lana Sator, Cater News
> Exhaust pipes which will eventually be fitted on to two space rockets.
Comments and images originally appeared on Wired.

Urban explorers usually delight exploration of obsolete post-industrial structures, latent spaces, ruins, such as plants, mental asylums, underground factories, and hospitals, refugee centres and bomb shelters. As Sator said:

We also try to find and infiltrate into active places, such as industrial plants, refugee centres and bomb shelters at night.

The difference between urban visit or tourism and urban exploration resides in process. As Vanishing Point founder Michael Cook confided to Geoff Manaugh/BLDGBLOG:

I think every piece of infrastructure — every building is on a trajectory, and you're experiencing it at just one moment in its very extended life. We see things, but we don't often ask how they came about or where they're going to go from here — whether there will be structural deterioration, or if living things will colonize the structure. We tend to ignore these things, or to see them in temporal isolation. We also don't give enough time or consideration to how this infrastructure fits into the broder urban fabric, within the history of a city, and where that city's going, and whose lives have been affected by it and whatever may happen to it in the future. I think these are all stories that really need to start being told. (…) I think the real question is: Are these photos of asylum hallways and drainage tunnels ultimatelu going to be useful to anyone else at some point in the future? And the answer is: probably not. Probably we're photographing the wrong things for that.

Probably so. And each urban explorer's task shares this goal to show us the hidden part of industrial cities: its ruins, its failure, in many ways. Michael Cook, Unknown Fields Division founders Liam Young and Kate Davies, Bryan Allen, and Lana Sator reveal us these images we do not see or want to see.

Suggested article: Will Wiles, The Irrediated Zone, Icon Magazine issue 105, March 2012, pp 52-59

Back to Lana Sator and her urban exploration. In December 2011, Sator explored the active plant owned by NPO Energomash.

Energomash Plant, 2011. Photo © Lana Sator, Caters News
> Lana Sator perching on a piece of machinery at the NPO Energomash plant.
Comments and images originally appeared on Wired.

We learnt that this plant is one of Russia's oldest rocket-engine manufacturers. With her camera, Sator took the risk to shoot this plant's interior and exterior spaces.

Energomash Plant, 2011. Photo © Lana Sator, Caters News.
> Outside the rocket plant. Sator claims she encountered no security measures during her secret visit.
Comments and images originally appeared on Wired.

She says to Wired:

For five evenings in a row, we walked around the grounds, looking for open doors.

Energomash Plant, 2011. Photo © Lana Sator, Caters News.
> A Panel full of gauges in a control room inside the plant.
Comments and images originally appeared on Wired.

As Sator reports, while abandoned, Energomash seems to be still operational. This plant develops space-shuttle boosters and missile engines for the military, Jake Hanrahan wrote.
Apparently:

Military plants and bases [in Russia] are too easy for infiltration.

Yet, Wired pointed to: "soon after publishing her photo online, the Russian military plice arrested [Lana] Sator"…

Energomash Plant, 2011. Photo © Lana Sator, Caters News.
> Inside the plant. Although it appears to be deserted, it is still operational.
Comments and images originally appeared on Wired.

More and source: Wired.