Looking Ahead / Season 3 Launch

All-American Ruins
4 min readJan 3, 2025

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Dear Friends,

I sat down in front of a fireplace several times over the course of December, in order to sort out my gratitude, but naturally, it wasn’t until I was on an airplane, thousands of miles up towards the stratosphere, that I figured out what I want to say — and who to say it to.

I decided it was best to make it simple and break my thanks down into a few different categories: people, organizations, editorial outlets, and partners, for all of their varied, generous support of my work this year. This meditation on imagination, mental/emotional/spiritual wellness, and the country I love so much — as witnessed through the lens of its underbelly, our ruins — keeps evolving of its own volition. But I don’t think it ever could’ve found its spot in the sun without such help and guidance and love.

So, without further ado, I’d like to kick this thank you note off by saying “hi” to my heavy-hitting partners at Radio Kingston and HUDSY for helping me build this abandoned multiverse, alongside the gorgeous people at Good Work Institute for offering resources to help me grow into my creative spirit, and my family at TMI Project for offering constant feedback and cheerleading as well as Airwave Podcasts for helping me cast a wider audience net.

To the stellar folks at Atlas Obscura, Business Insider, People Magazine, History Colorado, Chronogram, Q+ Magazine, Boing Boing, Walk Listen Create, and The End for sharing my work with your enthusiastic editorial audiences.

To every festival that, in some way/shape/form, spotlighted my work: Architecture Film Festival Lund, United Kingston International Audio Drama Festival, Duluth Superior Film Festival, Hrvatska Radiotelevizija and the 27th Prix Marulić, Eugene Environmental Film Festival, PopCon, Borscht Belt Film Festival @ the Borscht Belt Museum, MN WebFest, Catalyst Content Festival, Peekskill Film Festival, Sydney Web Fest, Melbourne WebFest, NZ Web Fest, Catskill Mountain Foundation and the Lexington Film Festival, Zepstone Arts Festival, Podcast Movement, Dove Block Film Project, Swedish International Film Festival, International Media Festival of Wales, and 4th World Congress of Psychogeography; in particular, those governing bodies that chose to award my work.

I’d most certainly also like to thank The Ambies, UK Press Gazette, Signal Awards, Disctopia, Parapod Festival, and SOVAS for honoring this body of work in various capacities.

But most importantly, the humans with whom I share all kinds of relationships — personal, creative, or otherwise — folks who’ve made this grueling and enlightening process a tad less lonely, in no real order: Adam Sekuler, Lindsey Began, Ana McAbee, Harold Copp, Caitlyn McColl, Jay Blotcher, Melody Gilbert, Toya Jackson, Fede Vargas, Evan Stern, Courtney Powell, Ned Donovan, Alicia Farmer, Becky Cote, Rafaelle Patattuci, Stev Allen-Hull, Isabel Wilder, Dylan Thuras, Ryan, Mom, Julie Shapiro, Mia Lobel, Martha Little, Angel Fonseca, Laura Kandel, Natasha Scully, Caleb Wyatt, Jeremiah Wenutu, Elisabeth Henry, Louis Inghilterra, Fletcher Patrucci, Michael Gioia, Maria Maddox/A Mouthful of Ghosts, Alex Leff/Human Nature Odyssey, Shaina Wexler/Daily Magic, and all of the beautiful people who read, listen, watch, share, understand, and revel in my little corner of the urbex universe.

“Gratitude” seems like too short of a word to express how much I feel it today. I’ve banked almost too much of it the past year, and I am so very overjoyed to feel all this warmth.

Big plans for 2025,

Blake xx

PS — Season 3 of abandoned launched today! Listen here — and look out for a surprise editorial feature about the show by Apple Podcasts next week. :)

COMING UP:

  • 2/21–23, 2025: SONOHR Radio & Podcast Festival (Bern, Switzerland)
  • 3/27–30, 2025: Garden State Film Festival (Asbury Park, NJ)
  • 5/14–18, 2025: Archaeology International Film Festival (Eugene, OR)
  • Winter 2025: Green Box Arts Artist Residency (Green Mountain Falls, CO)

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All-American Ruins
All-American Ruins

Written by All-American Ruins

A 🏚 fantastical multimedia travelogue

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