In the past 30 years, postindustrial decline has led to the development of the popular art form of “ruin porn” photography. Detroit is a primary subject of this cultural phenomenon and has become synonymous with this type of urban (often architectural) decay. In newspaper articles, coffee table books, documentaries and movies ‘the city in ruins’ has been Detroit’s singular defining trope outside its own city limits. However, Detroit is more than the ruinous remnants of its industrial history. Therefore, Detroiters have started to invert the media’s practice of depicting ruins by turning Detroit’s ‘most popular ruin’ into a medium itself:

Michigan Central Station embodies Detroit like no other building. Built to document the city’s significance at the beginning of the 20th century, MCS has symbolized the city’s status ever since. Its use began to decline and its appearance to decay along with the economic downturn of the city. Standing 70m tall in downtown Detroit, the former train station is highly visible. During its vacancy, the façade of this ruin has turned into a projection screen to reflect and change the image of the city. Originally, urban dwellers claimed the building through graffiti, but in recent years the façade has been used for major projections of local artists (like Eminem’s album cover reveal for “Revival”) and entrepreneurs like the Ford Motor Company. Ford bought the building and projected quotes of MCS’s past grandeur as well as the company’s vision for Detroit’s future onto its surface. Michigan Central Station, as a stand-in for all of Detroit, is thereby posited as a popular medium for Detroiters to ‘take back’ their city and script the future rather than being used by outside media to portray present shortcomings.