Barry W Hughes / Bahs

The STOMP project

People will find places - even in parking lots at noon they will find places - to do what they have to do, to be what they have to be.

Dennis Wood, Shadowed Spaces: in defense of indefensible space, 1978/1981

For adolescents in the Irish suburbs there is little to do. Being an adolescent is tough, not a child and not yet an adult, they inhabit a world of inbetween-ness; a world where housing estates, golf courses, forests, bridges, rivers and motorways can all provide a secret sanctuary from both the adults and young children alike. They seek out, or inherit, hidden spaces that offer cover to hide their sometimes illegal activities. They mark these territories with graffiti and carved names. They scorch the earth, burn the trees, destroy property, dump materials, litter, smoke, drink and experiment. The spaces the adolescents use are not consciously planned by the town developers, they are oversights, spaces which exist as a result of other planned spaces. While some can be removed or destroyed others can always be found. Car parks and green belts, river banks and hotel grounds are necessary, hence there will always remain a place for the more industrious adolescent to annex. As long as there are teenagers who are moved on from street corners and shopping centres, there will be somewhere more secluded to relocate to; somewhere the normative eyes of society cannot see them, somewhere they can be themselves without fear of judgement. These hidden spaces offer more to the teenager than cover from society, they offer chance to connect with a part of themselves they would otherwise feel threatened to display.

The kids stomp the ground beneath them, leaving empty cans, painted names and charcoal as remnants of their secretive activities.

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Part I : Near Sited                       Part II : Caught Out                      Part III: Truancy