History and earth history; human chronicles and deep time. It is tempting to knit these temporalities together and search for the fractures that form along the deformation zone. Surely Hashima is one such warped place. On the one hand, Hashima explodes into life in a shower of coal and steam. And, a fragment of the new Pacific Order rises above the waves like a brittle volcano. On the other hand, we have the irretrievable disorder of entropy; a heat death signalled by the falling of Fat Man and the layer of ash that covered nearby Nagasaki. Time as rebirth rubs up against time as catastrophe.
I am taken, however, with Carl’s description of Hashima as a ‘dark Saturn.’ I think of it also as a cosmic body. For me, it is a black hole, where neither history nor earth history can exist. Hashima does not rush toward its destiny, nor slump into perpetuity. It implodes upon itself. Huge bloated books, children’s crayons, rotting wood and tiny sea shells pack tightly together, turn away from space and time, and hurl themselves into an abyss that is full to the brim and beyond.
Hashima: Future of Ruins 