Fragmentary structures persisting in the present as testimonies to the history of landscapes, particularly urban ones, through architectural vestiges that comprise the memory of places: evidence gesturing towards previous temporalities; fallen existences from an earlier urban fabric, present yet in contrast with the contemporary city. In this sense, they relate directly to the concept of palimpsest. Such structures, inscribed within lived landscape and documented in images, transgress the temporal boundary between present and past. None remain indifferent before them: ruins provoke one's being and dwelling in the World; they evoke contemplative meanings and aesthetic appreciations alongside remembrance of violent acts and reflections upon finitude.
Ruins, as significant presences within landscape, as sensory dimensions in the recognition of physical vestiges from former times, may be conceived as spaces of Time, just as we rediscover within them the temporalities of inhabited Space. Numerous ruins, valorised as historical heritage with emphasis upon cultural-identitarian relations, have served (and continue to serve) political ends when mobilised within imaginaries and narratives elaborated through nationalist projects—national and even transnational monuments, for instance—which seek to legitimise the (often mythical) origins of modern nations, appropriating them for discursive purposes to disseminate particular ideologies, including philofascist ones. Imposing ruins represent the artistic potential and technical ingenuity of ancient civilisations: they transmit cultural and moral values, symbols of power. In the Anthropocene, ruins afford us a certain measure of transformations.
Silvio Luiz Cordeiro