by Luke Bennett
PAINTING THE GREY
Albania’s early post-communist years also witnessed the rise of a more explicit material engagement with MSBs when they were visually transformed via the application of paint. Early acts of disguising the object were noted as sporadic events along coastal areas such as in Ksamil where yellow and blue bunkers were observed in 1996 (English archaeologist, pers. comm.). This seemingly superficial modification of the bunker exterior rests on a psychological approach utilized from 2000 in the capital city of Tirana by, the then mayor, Edi Rama as part of his ‘A Return to Identity’ project. He applied a dose of colourful creativity towards the city’s communist constructions which was designed to alter both the Stalinist buildings and the relationship of inhabitants to their urban environment (Pojani 2015, 79). By removing the concrete grey from the city and stimulating it with bright and bold designs, Rama aimed to refine the visual urbanity and reassure Albanians that the country could progress forward with confidence. This vibrancy shifted the temporality of communist structures into the future proclaiming the material promise that change was on its way as evidenced by these transitional, but powerful, visual signs of progress (Pusca 2008, 380). Painting the city became painting Albania as this multi-coloured initiative was adopted elsewhere, specifically in areas with tourist potential, aimed towards a range of communist relics but particularly the MSB. The act of bunker painting transformed the perception of the object and made a gesture towards disassembling communism by deconstructing the complex socio-political ideologies that surrounded their conception, construction and use under Hoxha.
The decoration of Albanian MSBs is not solely an Albanian practice. In Ksamil there has been clear evidence of foreign bunker painting along the coastline, primarily by tourists visiting with the Czech Republic holiday company ‘Kudrna’ (Figure 9.2). Since the early 2000s, bunker painting in Ksamil has been offered within their itinerary for the ‘Land of Mountains, Bunkers and Mercedes’ holiday. For a number of years this group generated some of the most graphic and brightly coloured MSBs in the whole of Albania. This was strangely appropriate as these bunkers had been created as a defensive response to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and now tourists from part of that former sovereign state have engaged with these relics as part of their holiday entertainment. Regrettably, the increase in construction and beach terracing for tourism has slowly eradicated the majority of Ksamil’s coastal bunkers, including those painted by Kudrna tourists which had enticed people to engage with these provocative objects. As an active endeavour, the painting of any MSB enables a reconfiguration in the perception of the object. This operates in a similar manner as the ambition of much of the Berlin Wall art, which was ‘to overcome the Wall by painting the Wall’ (Baker 1993, 721). This psychological objective can be applied to the visual modification and conversion of Albania’s most ubiquitous Hoxha-era symbol into a more appealing object to overcome a collective communist mentality.
Figure 9.2. Ksamil’s Front-Line Painted Mushroom-Shaped Bunkers Exposed by Beach Terracing (2012, Emily Glass).
DESTRUCTION AND REPRESENTATION
Despite there being no official ‘debunkerization’ process, from 1997 some of Ksamil’s MSBs were subject to destruction through cap-blowing to release their high metal content to be sold as scrap. This small-scale clandestine bunker breaking was achieved using explosives, which were freely available at that time, or by burning tyres in the bunker interior to crack the concrete. After the Ministry of Defence declassification of 2011, the rate of MSB destruction across Albania was greatly intensified as they were no longer legally protected. This was linked to events in the wider world, predominantly the economic crisis which had left much heavy machinery idle in Albania and the high global price of steel. Due to its design, the later-produced MSBs contained more metal than the earlier ones and paradoxically, by being comprised of fewer yet more solid elements, were easier to break the metal out using a machine. It has been estimated that the metal retrieved from one MSB was worth 250 euros and, with roughly five or more able to be destroyed per day, this became an extremely profitable economic venture.
The strategic installation of MSBs along Albania’s roadsides, coastlines and in urban areas has meant that recent infrastructure improvements and construction for economic development or societal progression have had a great impact on bunker numbers. Modernization of landscapes in this way can affect the means by which people interact with their environment. It can lead to ruptures in their cultural biographies caused by the truncation and impoverishment of their living embodiment of memory (Knapp & Ashmore 1999, 10). Over time, the destruction and remodelling of Albania’s communist landscapes risk losing the human dimension of MSBs with fewer narratives created, renewed and remembered as a result of this loss. The disputed and uncertain future of these structures is one reason why it is important to investigate and document these structures as well as provide an insight into their social and material relations.
Relics of the Cold War can be classified as cultural assets, which, as John Schofield says, have an atmosphere which is tangible and can be drawn out by any visitor who experiences them (Schofield 2004, 202), irrespective of their comprehension of Albania’s communist past. The need to comprehend ‘the story behind the thing’ may go some way to explain the level to which non-Albanians and tourists have developed a degree of fascination with MSBs. Objects which have no particular importance or value fixed to them by local people can often be regarded as significant or meaningful characteristics of identity to outsiders (Thomas 1991 as quoted in Tilley 2006, 70). The differential tourist-local viewpoint towards the symbolic value of an object is a common conception when the terms ‘culture’ and ‘history’ become more or less synonymous (Rowlands 2002, 126). For example to Berlin visitors the Wall is the defining feature of the capital, whereas to inhabitants of the city, it is not (Baker 1993, 720).
This scenario is repeated in Albania, where to Albanians it is not the MSB but the double-headed eagle on the national flag which is the emblem of their country. Despite this, innovative Albanians have unwittingly reinforced an iconic stereotype by producing MSB souvenirs for consumption. Bunker-shaped marble ashtrays and penholders and the image represented on T-shirts and bags convey a national cultural meaning towards the bunker as being uniquely Albanian. Ultimately, these function in a similar way to more obvious artefacts collected by tourists as symbols of a nation’s identity. For example, models of the Eiffel Tower symbolize France and tartan objects signify Scotland (Edensor 2002, 113). Once the miniaturized MSB object is removed from Albania it is recontextualized within a new spatial environment as a keep-sake in a foreign home (Edensor 2002, 114) and has the potential to displace the memory of a holiday experience. Subsequent narratives regarding Albania could be allowed to focus around the memento as the authentic point of reference to the visit (Steward 1984 as quoted in Buchli & Lucas 2001, 80). The accelerated pace of destruction that has occurred around Ksamil could potentially leave visitors with a sense of disappointment by only spotting the occasional overgrown MSB up a distant hillside. This would be particularly disheartening if their trip had been prepared for by reading the great number of travelogues that continually cite the proliferation of bunkers across Albania. Indeed, future Ksamil tourists may find that their only remaining avenue to engage with a MSB would be to purchase a novelty souvenir.
BIOGRAPHIES OF ENGAGEMENT
It is evident that the complexities of Albania’s bunkers go beyond the pre-cast concrete and metal fabric of their construction. Buchli has suggested that looking at what happens before and after the artefact is more significant than the actual object; that the terms of materiality, rather than material culture itself, and the differential ability of individuals to participate in these processes is more important (Buchli 2002, 19). It is in this way that the meanings of MSBs have changed along the temporal route of their life histories. When dealing with the materiality of recent conflict, it is important to consider t
he differential perception through which structural relics are engaged with and how they function as totems of memory in society. The ways in which MSBs are identified with by people and the manner in which these structures are reused can reconfigure the value of the object (Tilley 2006, 71). It is for this reason that it is crucial to explore Albania’s bunkers while the subject-object relationship still embodies living memory, thus enabling the personal element to be extracted and disentangled.
In a recent article on the significance of communist heritage in contemporary Albania, Francesco Iacono and Klejd Këlliçi addressed how aspects other than trauma and pain need to be considered when examining relics of the Cold War. They acknowledge that the oft-cited, broad-brush view that material legacies of dictatorships are an ‘unwanted’ or ‘difficult’ heritage to negotiate does not take into account the specificities of each socio-historical context or suitably consider the present situation of that country (Iacono & Këlliçi 2015, 97). In the case of Albania, MSBs were a collective creation involving both military personnel and civilians during one of the bleakest periods of Albania’s Cold War. Iacono and Këlliçi have suggested that this depth of engagement had a major impact on why bunkers were attributed a particular importance by those aged over 60 in a survey regarding dictatorship heritage in current Albanian society (Iacono & Këlliçi 2015, 109). This affiliation reveals the powerful agency of the MSB, demonstrated in the manner by which they produce effects, impact on emotion and can cause feelings of anger, fear, nostalgia or joy at the passing of an era (Hoskins 2006, 76). Even those structures not positioned within any sphere of active engagement have a collective agency towards the memory of the Hoxha era and communist life. As time has moved forward, this influence has shifted to encompass narratives of post-communism, which include engagements forged through active action or as a passive result of everyday routine. By this approach, these seemingly inert bunker objects can be seen to have social lives (Appadurai 1986), which anthropomorphizes their relationships with people, chiefly at the level of the individual. This emphasis on the singular is important because it creates a specific object identity which is localized, particular and precise (Hoskins 2006, 78), as opposed to generic and globalized, from which cultural biographies can be formed.
Biographies of MSBs can be considered by investigating the object as an individual or collective entity. They were produced in vast numbers and can be examined to see how these generic forms were manufactured, distributed, used, reused and discarded, together with their changing social and cultural roles and significance in these varied contexts (Mytum 2010, 243). In the manner that personal, social and cultural identity is embodied within persons and objectified by things (Tilley 2006, 61), MSBs are personified by people and vice versa. Their biographies are intertwined: from the population involvement in their creation and communist military use through to later reuse engagements. These objects are not only objectified at the point of production or construction, but are recontextualized throughout their life histories, during moments of consumption, perception and transformation (Miller 1987 as quoted in Tilley 2006, 60). As personal narratives develop and are renewed, other stories are created and meanings become transmuted. Albanians may harbour many tales about MSBs, but they often tend to have one that is personal. These can range from the trivial or comical to the sombre, but they are testament to the past and present role which these structures play in the lives of all Albanians.
CONCLUSION
As demonstrated through the story of Ksamil, the MSB has endured as an artefact of modern conflict for 50 years in the landscape and psyche of Albania. For half of this time these objects served to reinforce a Cold War mentality of xenophobic paranoia, visually communicated via their brute form and sheer quantity. This ensured that the other half of their life history has been as an object tolerated with suspicious unease until intermittent functional reuses gave way to more active engagements. Paul Virilio has termed these robust remnants of the Cold War as survival machines of reinforced concrete (Virilio 1994, 41), which in Albania have been difficult to destroy physically and emotionally. Archaeologically, MSBs represent the ideals of a past future, physically located within Albania’s capitalist present. They are a communication tool though which their use, abandonment and subsequent reuse experiences can be transmitted to present and future generations. This mutability is validated by the tenacious nature of these objects, particularly where they have been transformed into objects of social and cultural relevance. These conversions can be considered particularly ironic in those places where MSBs are being used economically to attract the very foreign elements that they were originally designed to repel.
Materially, MSBs are monuments of war, collectively created by Albania’s population workforce and filled with historic practice. The individuals employed in the formation process can be identified but it is the object which encapsulates the personality of these people and the regime which initially conceived them. This legacy cannot be ignored as these structures transmit a powerful collective agency whether people choose to actively to engage with them or not. The resulting complexities of MSBs necessitate the use of modern conflict archaeology as an interdisciplinary approach to explore their mutable nature and comprehend their contemporary significance. In addition, these seemingly benign mushroom-shaped lumps of concrete encompass complex layers of memory which can be examined anthropologically through subject-object relations, whether Albanian or foreign. It is through this crucial relationship and the formation of bunker biographies that the previous dominant narratives of communism can be counteracted.
Albania has not really developed the Western inclination to fetishize Cold War ruins. This is most probably because the drive towards becoming post-communist afforded the aura of the modern to completely override any sense of retrospective materialism. However, since the late 2000s, a low-level nostalgic appreciation of that time period has slowly emerged, enabling more recent coverage of Cold War relics and stories to raise issues of identity, memory, trauma and significance. These engagements have ascribed new layers of meaning and raised socio-economic and political questions about the place and value of communist heritage within contemporary Albanian society. Further negotiations of tangible and intangible aspects of this complex heritage may yet provide a navigable route to manoeuvre MSBs from merely being a hangover of Albania’s past towards their being a constructive inheritance for the future. One aspect is for certain: as additional engagements create further narratives and existing stories are re-worked, the complex biographies of MSBs are by no means complete.
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