In the Ruins of the Cold War Bunker

by Luke Bennett

  More specifically, by experimenting with the concept of recuperative materialities, I endeavour to show how the materiality of the tunnel and the immateriality of the music interact with the senses and shape people’s consciousness of cross-strait relations, thereby creating a potentially therapeutic atmosphere. Discussions show that far from dead or non-living, these (im)materialities are full of life and energy in their ability to communicate affectively. It is hoped that forays into the artistic engagements with a former Cold War tunnel, and how commemorative and recuperative materialities interact with and shape people’s consciousness of past histories, present happenings and future dreams, can help us gain a more nuanced understanding of the coping strategies of a post-conflict society.

  POST-WAR COMMEMORATION, MATERIALITY AND RECUPERATION

  Battlefield relics, monuments or memorials are some of the first examples that come to mind when we think of post-war commemoration. Although the contents, politics and organization of such commemorative structures have been well researched, there seems to be a dearth of exploration into the commemorative materialities of such artefacts. Although Nicholas Saunders (2000) reminds us of the importance of recognizing the physicality of conflict, and thus highlights the need to understand the material culture of war, there is little attempt to go beyond the physical objects themselves and consider how, through their materialities, they interact with humans. I have elsewhere adopted a landscape analysis approach in an attempt to capture the power and representations of Kinmen’s arsenal of battlefield heritage, eliciting the multiple ideological messages possessed by military slogans, war memorials and the like (Zhang 2009, 2010). Here, I would go beyond representational analysis to uncover how materialities of the battlefield past are not dead and cold, but are in fact lively and restless in their interaction with humans of the present. In other words, instead of presuming that meanings are already inscribed onto things, I see such things as being able to create meanings themselves.

  As such, the commemorative materialities of conflict-related artefacts and how their meanings are constantly changing and being changed by the rapprochement climate become important to analyse. Also, as mentioned in the introduction, the aim here is to go beyond visual-centric analyses and engage with the other senses (see Howes 1991), and to demonstrate how materiality acts as a platform through which people and ‘social objects’ (Harré 2002) engage in lively conversations across time and space. What are the implications of having a better understanding of aspects pertaining to sensate and affective communication (see Beckstead et al. 2011)? One possibility lies in the potential for conflict-related artefacts to serve as spaces of recuperation in a post-conflict society where people are still coping with a fractured past. In fact, this rubs shoulders with new insights from research on therapeutic landscapes1 that seeks to examine the ‘significance of prior familiarity with representations of specific landscapes’ (Rose 2012, 1381). In the same vein, David Conradson suggests an individual’s engagement with the bio-physical environment as involving both a ‘pre-reflective embodied response and a subsequent interpretive element’ (2005, 340). Both the ‘prior familiarity’ of Emma Rose (2012) and the ‘pre-reflective embodied response’ of Conradson (2005) reflect a shift away from conventional cognitive models of psychoanalytic analyses to acknowledge the agency of the physical environment in initiating therapeutic effects, and as such dovetail well with the concept of recuperative materialities.

  To facilitate such a discussion, a philosophical/ontological underpinning is necessary to set the stage for a horizontal distribution of power between people and things, which lays the foundation for interrogating the possible exchanges of properties between them. Gilles Deleuze (1988, 18) suggested that the thesis of parallelism ‘does not consist merely in denying any real causality between the mind and the body, it disallows any primacy of the one over the other’. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Reversibility Thesis could also be useful in explicating the mutual and dialectical relationship between humans and objects. Christopher Tilley (2004, 17) utilises this thesis in his exploration with the materiality of stone:

  In the process of touching an object, the same thesis of the reversibility of sensation/perception can be posited to be at work. I touch the stone and the stone touches me…. Touching the stone is possible because both my body and the stone are part of the same world. There is in this sense a relation of identity and continuity between the two.

  The sense of touch is but one of the multiple sensate and sensorial aspects of making material memories. More importantly, these non-representational conceptualizations denounce subject-object dualisms and at the same time give agency to the object. Therefore, objects are seen here as being able to do something, ‘has sufficient coherence to perform actions, produce effects, and alter situations’ (Bennett 2004, 355). This leads to Jane Bennett’s (2010, viii) definition of ‘vitality’ in her concept of ‘vital materialism’:

  By ‘vitality’ I mean the capacity of things – edibles, commodities, storms, metals – not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own.

  In fact, the recognition of agency in things is not new. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981) introduce us to the communicative ability of objects in the domestic environment. Their concept of ‘psychic transactions’ very much captures the affective energy of communication between things and humans. In the context of Kinmen, things associated with its battlefield past are thus not merely commodities of the tourism industry. Rather, they are animated with spirits of the past and vitality of the present, and are constantly in conversations with people, creating affective experiences and structuring the consciousness of other actors and actants of the battlefield tourism landscape.

  RECUPERATIVE MATERIALITIES: THE KINMEN TUNNEL MUSIC FESTIVAL

  After the artillery battle in 1958, the KMT forces constructed underground tunnels (Figure 8.2) so as to preserve their combat capability during artillery bombardments. This ‘tunnelization’ process gave rise to ‘underground Kinmen’, which in recent years has become a valuable tourism resource. Construction of the Zhaishan Tunnel started in 1961 and was completed in 1966. While the tunnel provided shelter for military personnel, its distinctive water passage connects the inner land to the ocean, which facilitated efficient deployment of naval vessels. The military significance of Zhaishan waned as the artillery bombardment ended following the normalization of ties between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in 1979. Nevertheless, the tunnel continued to perform an ideological function of conveying nationalist ideologies to local Kinmenese and visitors from the main island of Taiwan after the abolition of martial law in 1992.

  In the tunnel, visitors get to see a series of rooms where the soldiers once lived. Tour guides ritualistically emphasize the ‘almost impossible task of excavating through the bedrock of granite gneiss’ and the ‘sufferings that soldiers experienced during the round-the-clock construction’. Visitors are encouraged to ‘touch the granite structure, breathe in the dense air and imagine how life was like for the soldiers during the war’ (Zhang 2013, 228). Such engagement with the haptic is also evident in Kevin Hetherington’s (2002) discussion on the visually impaired and their interaction with museum exhibits. In conceptualizing a scopic that is proximal rather than one that is distal (governed by the sense of sight), he shows how touch is a ‘source of visualisation’: ‘Touch introduces the body’s surface reflexivity into knowing; through touch we are made aware of ourselves as more than just an eye/I … We become extensions into the world of things through our own bodies and their haptic capabilities’ (ibid., 202; see also Hetherington 2003). Transforming military facilities and infrastructures into tourist sites/sights and presenting them in their original state not only provide a unique experience for the visitors but also ‘raise their emotional quotient by [allowing them to] empathis[e] with the events’ (Muzaini 200
4, 53).

  Figure 8.2. The Zhaishan Tunnel (2008, J. J. Zhang).

  In recent years, due to the improvement of cross-strait ties, the tunnel sees itself hosting the Kinmen Tunnel Music Festival, aiming to foster rapprochement between China and Taiwan. Organized by the Kinmen National Park and conceptualized by Taiwanese cellist and artistic director Chang Cheng-Jieh, the music festival has been an instant hit since its inception in 2009 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Kuningtou Battle.2 Running into its seventh instalment in 2015, the music performance features renowned Taiwanese musicians playing (mainly) classical pieces on a floating platform that glides through the tunnel’s water passage. Audiences are gathered along the originally elevated granite corridor, which overlooks the waterway. The music festival sets the tone for rhythms of hope and peace that bounce off surfaces of granite and water.

  Chang shared his views on how music has instilled life into Zhaishan Tunnel:

  I have always thought if it is merely Zhaishan Tunnel, it is only something that is left behind by the war … by history. The feeling is unique when you enter, but it does not possess a new life. But with music inside, when the music flows and notes start to dance…. Music, I think is an excellent language. It comes up as a little more special than the Chinese language or any other languages. Today, when you enter the Tunnel and the guide talks about what happened 50 or 60 years ago, how this was built because of the war … etc … This sounds very direct, very hard … merely a gesture. But if today you enter the Tunnel, and the music comes on … The musical notes could almost bring you to a kind of … to another world. But that world differs from each and every person. Moreover, I think that music is the best bridge of communication between different generations. It is in fact, a language between our world and the other world…. The force to move you is even stronger. So, I am happy that through music, the Zhaishan Tunnel can have a new life, but I hope that this new life can thrive on and be sustainable. (Personal interview)

  Music is not only more powerful than words; it is also full of energy and breathes new life into the tunnel. Here, I want to highlight the functions performed by things. In other words, instead of treating things as being used by humans to carry out certain tasks, and therefore passive, these things perform such functions through their materiality or, in the spirit of Gibson’s ‘mutualism’ (1979, cited in Graves-Brown 2000), afford the performances to take place. The materiality of the tunnel provides perfect acoustics and thus affords the music to be transmitted at the highest auditory standards. Conversely, the music, which itself is produced by the instrument, acts as the tunnel’s voice and softens its concreteness while affording the audiences the space for imaginations. One audience wrote on the feedback form, ‘Grateful, thankful, touched’, while another expressed, ‘Bravo! Really touching, fantastic sound effect!’3 It is apparent that music does arouse one’s emotional quotient. However, this is not to say that the audiences are directed to a particular conclusion, but, as what Chang suggested the ‘other world’ to which the music brings is different for everyone. The recuperative properties of the music festival are reflected by the following poem written and posted on Facebook by an attendee:

  For Warriors Who Gave Their Lives

  The violin’s elegant notes praise your ultimate sacrifice for this land;

  The cello’s muffled sound conveys our admiration for you;

  We no longer hear the roaring engines of fighter planes;

  … Nor we see the battling warships;

  We no longer feel the rumbling of the cannons

  But I hear it. I hear the flute playing, through the holes left behind by gunpowder blasts;

  And I see it. The ensemble of violin and cello interweaves and mirrors

  the battle scenes you were in;

  And as I close my eyes, I feel the comfort you felt when you closed yours then…

  This poem, though amateurish, vividly captures the essence of the concept of ‘mentalizing’ used in the therapeutic landscape literature. According to Rose (2012, 1385), mentalizing ‘explicitly involves finding meaning in … visual and other sensory images, which we understand through our ability to articulate. For example, in interpreting what is seen metaphorically we give thought to feeling’. The music produced in the tunnel weaves the island’s ruptured past into the everyday consciousness of people in the post-war era and, in so doing, allows mentalization to occur. Mentalizing thus possesses recuperative qualities as the process assists one in seeking a closure to a traumatic event.

  The connection of the music performance with the consciousness of the attendee epitomises Hegel’s articulation of the ambiguous relationship between nature and the spectator: ‘These particular natural and objective things produce moods in our heart which correspond to moods of nature. We can identify our life with this life of nature that re-echoes in our soul and heart, and in this way possess a spiritual depth of our own’ (Hegel 1820s/1975, cited in Rose 2012, 1384–1385). Importantly, the recuperative qualities of the tunnel music are seen here to ‘improve individual self-understanding and to enhance the capacity to empathise with others’ (Rose 2012, 1381). The tunnel acts as a ‘sensorium’ (Ong 1991) where the various actors and actants come together. The music is able to create a sensorial experience to connect the bodies of the musicians and spectators with that of the aura of the tunnel. Unlike conventional war memorials where the sense of sight takes precedence, the affective effects of the music in the tunnel-sensorium offer a proximal alternative to the visualisation of past woes and present hopes. It also provides an avenue through which the sound of peace could be relayed to the other side for a promising future. Indeed, the music travels in and between different ‘worlds’, be it now and then, here and there, us and them, dead and alive. When asked about the music festival’s theme of ‘Kinmen Harmony’ and its role in cross-strait relations, Chang expressed its promises and limitations:

  I hope that we can gradually attract our friends from across the strait to attend this music festival. What we hope for is peace. Gradually, when the conflict gets even more neutralised, I hope that their [Chinese] musicians can participate in the performance as well. This site was where both sides engaged each other in warfare in the past, but today, people from both sides come together and perform in a music festival. In fact, I have tried inviting the Chinese musicians over for the 60th Anniversary of the Kuningtou Battle. They refused to come! They felt that they had lost that battle! Hahaha … but I think this can be overcome slowly…. The role that I wish the music festival could play is … through the music … I believe the Kinmen people, I believe the Xiamen people, I believe the Taiwanese, I believe the Chinese … I believe the Kinmenese overseas diaspora, I believe people from all over the world do not want a war. I wish that this music festival can tell people that this is the last tunnel … this is the last war … that we wish we could have peace forever. This is what I wish to express most. We would also like to tell … through music … those politicians with a vital stake in the society that we do not want war we want peace.

  It is evident that the materiality of the Zhaishan Tunnel reinvents itself over the years and is active in (re)creating social relations. Music in a battlefield tunnel might not be merely something to remind people of the battlefield past, but also seeks to transcend political boundaries in its attempt to re-create entirely new collective memories in the name of peace and harmony for participants of different political allegiance. As Elaine Freedgood argues, ‘The knowledge stockpiled in things bears on the grisly specifics of conflicts and conquests that a culture can neither regularly acknowledge nor permanently destroy if it is going to be able to count on its own history to know itself and realize a future’ (Freedgood 2006, 2). As such, ‘[m]emory is constantly refigured in practice and performance through what individuals do. As things are done, other “events” are remembered and re-placed into the present. Memory is temporalized and can reinvigorate what one is doing “now”; it is also reinvigorated and can be r
erouted in the “now”, but not in an exact rerun of the past’ (Crang 2001, cited in Crouch 2004, 91). Indeed, it is at the intersections of remembering, forgetting and creating memories that both the music and tunnel live. As much as the tunnel still exudes the patriotism and fervour of a past era for some, it has also lent its own material conditions and therapeutic potentials to transmitting the music of peace and rapprochement. Yet, the music festival seeks not to erase memories of the war but to remake memories – collective memories that are shared by the performers and audiences from China and Taiwan within the acoustical setting of the Tunnel. The Zhaishan Tunnel Music Festival could not have been possible without the physicality of the military tunnel. As Rose (2012, 1382) reminds us, ‘Relationships are actualised through material encounter, as well as memory, longing and desire, as psychically internalized experiences, shaping the self and resonating meaningfully, consciously and unconsciously’. Conversely, the music and tunnel would not have fulfilled their roles in the promotion of cross-strait ties without the ‘import’ of other places. It is through the constant reference to ‘the other side’, to the Chinese tourists, musicians and officials, and to historical events that the narrative power of the music festival is sustained. This testifies to Mike Crang’s observation that ‘places are made but they are not bounded, fixed entities [and] are relationally linked to other places. In other words … the paradox of experiencing a place is that it depends on other absent places’ (Crang 2006, 53). In this case the music festival can be thought to take place not just within the bounded interior of the tunnel, but is made possible through the co-existence of Kinmen’s relationship with mainland China. The presence of an absent landscape is as much significant as the physical environment itself.