Grangegorman Community Collective: A Photographic Essay
If you happen to find yourself on Dublin’s North Side and see a massive Transformer robot menacingly towering over you, do not be alarmed. This is just the guardian and gate-keeper of the Grangegorman Community Collective — Dublin’s biggest squat.
Since the summer of 2013 the so-called Grangegorman Community Collective has been quietly going about its occupation of a large unused piece of NAMA (National Asset Management Agency) controlled property, transforming it into a shared space of productivity and ideas. This is not, however, another manifestation of the circus that was the Occupy movement, although within a similar vein of civil disobedience. This is a group of people turning idle pieces of property into useful spaces — essentially doing the government’s job for them.
For the majority of the squat’s existence it has been a rather private endeavor. Too much noise and the operation could have been jeopardized by media attention and shut down before it had a chance to grow into what is is now. After an eviction attempt on behalf of private security, a couple of Gardai, and the receiver in March, however, the Grangegorman squat has been opening its doors to the media and the debate between the opinion of the courts and that of public opinion. So what is it now?
The Grangegorman Community Collective is just what it says in the name — a community of people with the belief that there are alternatives to the corporatized model of property seizure and development that leads to uniformity, higher rent prices, stagnant ideas, and dullness. Vibrancy and life, the call to “rise” and transform through a more direct and personal means of improving a neighborhood is the prevailing ethos. All of this points toward the one fundamental expression of alternative spaces such as this — What are the possibilities of life?
Walking through the gates you first see a community garden in what used to be one of Dublin’s biggest heroin shooting galleries. A few residents and visitors tend to vegetable patches; mostly tomatoes, carrots, wild garlic, cabbage, embedded in boxes sitting on the concrete and lined with moss to help retain water. Sustainability. Young trees that might one day help break up the concrete grow in strategic positions. Flowers dot the urban garden with color.
Like any community, the squat in Grangegorman is not without its immediately perceptible contradictions. Years of waste and detritus cover much of the area. Broken glass, empty tins, and industrial material from the lot’s previous commercial life still sit in piles, hampering the effort. It is obvious that the vacant space was a place where things and waste ended up, to be forgotten about, but never disappearing. The effort to clean this place up is massive and requires a lot more than just a few dedicated residents and visitors. There is also the case of, where else can this stuff go, and, more importantly, what can be salvaged? A question not often asked in the current capitalist climate despite the rhetoric of efficiency and austerity.
The Grangegorman Community Collective is also part art installation. Cultural nights of poetry and music have been part of the squat since its beginning. Artist who can’t get access to studio space can come here. Sculptor work can be found throughout the warehouses. The walls are layered with years of graffiti and shout the language of change, but also the aggression of disenfranchised citezens. As one active member put it, “It’s like being inside the mind of a Dublin street kid.” The walls are inscribed with the ideas of alternative. Everything from the standard urban art slogans like ‘Fuck the Police’ to challenging statements about property can be found all over the walls.
Unlike many squats throughout Europe, there is no overt political unity to the Grangegorman Community Collective. This is not to say that what is happening is not political, it absolutely is. But it is political in the sense that people are demonstrating that it is possible to live in a world where our lives are not controlled by the interests that currently run the government and alienate ordinary citizens from their own communities. I’m skeptical about the future of this direct control of local spaces as the ultimate alternative, but I’m not cynical about what it expresses. The amount of labor, time, and commitment needed to overcome the red-tape, the powerful moneyed interests of big business, and actually transform the space into a more sustainable living community is almost too much to overcome. This does not mean the struggle is worthless, it just means that the institutions of democracy have failed the citizens.
I’m still hoping for a world where basic needs are met by some alienated process and I can spend my time devoted to watching films, writing poetry and living peacefully with my neighbors. More direct democracy and local control speaks to the ideas of an alternative system, but whatever that system is needs to be one where it is no longer necessary to occupy these public spaces. Public space, shared resources, and sustainable living should be the norm, not the opposition to the norm, and that’s just what Grangegorman represents. People can already live like this, its just a matter of time before governments do too. The question remains the same — What is the potential for life?
Words and Photography: LucasSpiro/Blackfish_Media_Cooperative
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