Ruining Film Undoing Time

Ruins in their decay speak to us of passing time and of mortality; but they also expose unfamiliar dynamics of temporality.

But why the current day ruinenlust?

And why the current interest in modern ruins?

This paper will examine the contemporising effects of the modern ruin by focussing on a relationship between film and ruin at the decaying 1960s St Peter’s Seminary building at Cardross in Scotland.

Johnny Rodger is a writer, critic, and Professor of Urban Literature at the Glasgow School of Art. He has published several books of fiction –including Redundant (1998), g haun(s) Q (1996), and The Auricle (1995)– and critical works like the recent Tartan Pimps: Gordon Brown, Margaret Thatcher and the New Scotland (2010), Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century (2009), The Red Cockatoo: James Kelman and the Art of Commitment(2011), and the monograph Gillespie, Kidd & Coia 1956-87 (2007).  His latest publication is The Hero Building: An Architecture of Scottish National Identity.