by Luke Bennett
THE FUTURE
Writing shortly after the end of the Cold War, Eric Hobsbawm (1995, 247) suggested that in the 21st century, future generations remote from the living memories of the 1970s and 1980s ‘will puzzle over the apparent insanity of this outburst of military fever [and] the rhetoric of apocalypse’ that they find in the ruins of the Cold War. Certainly, as time passes the fixity of meanings for these places will progressively erode, as all sorts of semantic and/or architectural appropriations take hold. But while Hobsbawm seems fairly certain of his prediction, we should perhaps be more circumspect. At various points in this book we have encountered bunker-gazers trying to imagine how our distant ancestors will read our bunker-ruins, for instance Günter Grass’ depiction of Nazi soldiers sat within the Atlantic Wall debating this topic in The Tin Drum (2004), or W. G. Sebald (2002) in future-focused reverie standing before Orford Ness’s ‘Pagodas’. As studies of attempts to signal warnings about the hazardous content of bunker-like nuclear waste repositories have shown (Van Wyck 2004), we simply can’t know how future generations will make meaning from the remains of our bunkers, and indeed we already have clear signs that we routinely appropriate bunkers for new uses, and give them new meanings.
Figure 14.1. The Last Man, and the Ruins: The Greenham Common’s Cruise Missile Bunkers (2008, Matthew Flintham).
Bowers and Booth have shown us that Cold War sites like York bunker were considered bereft of heritage value for their first decade after their abandonment; their sudden accession as heritage in 2000 had nothing inevitable or permanent about it. Places are plastic, they are moulded by prior uses, but also have the ability to be reconfigured both materially and semantically. As Chris Van Dyke has argued: ‘What matters on a landscape changes as meanings appear and disappear’ (2013, 410). Cold War bunker sites – in terms of their currently still dominant heritage framings at least – are presently considered important places because they tell us of a final, world destroying war that was prepared for, but ultimately averted. Extrapolating from this, Hobsbawm suggests that our ancestors will look down on us for having taken the world so close to the brink. But a very different civilization, a neo-Sparta in which destruction and aggression is resurrected as a dominant cultural virtue, would perhaps read things quite differently: for instance that our abandonment of ‘our’ bunkers is a sign of our emasculated weakness and cultural decadency. Furthermore (and slightly less bleakly) it is equally possible that the Cold War’s bunkers’ longest-lasting cultural legacies could actually prove to be their 21st-century co-option as locations for the filming of blockbuster movies, as award-winning funky offices or as improvised archival shelters in the face of global climate change.
NOTE
1.See, for example, http://www.burlingtonbunker.co.uk/; https://www.theurbanexplorer.co.uk/burlington-bunker-corsham-wiltshire/; http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicrudloe.html
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Index
acoustic analysis, 17, 68, 76, 83, 137, 139–140, 143, 226, 237, 243
Adam, Ken, 57, 63, 67, 72, 238
Adey, Peter, 118, 128
affect, 5, 6, 10, 11, 14–18, 25, 27, 30, 35, 45–46, 48–54, 58, 66, 69, 75–76, 78, 80, 83, 104, 113, 116, 133–141, 147, 154, 175–176, 179, 185, 190, 208–209, 212, 235–236, 238, 240, 242–243;
abjection (Kristeva), 45–46, 54;
affective-materialities, 25, 147, 238, 240;
autocentric affect, 69;
fear, 69;
impressions of place, 185;
music, 136–140;
sensorium (Ong), 138, 141, 144;
sensory stimuli, 69, 133;
sensuality, 17, 25, 104, 116, 141;
smell, 69, 190, 208–209, 212, 242;
sound, 63, 69, 83, 208–209;
teleoaffective (Schatzki), 175–176, 179;
unbound affects (Pollock), 49;
visualisation, 48–54, 141.
See also embodied experience; haunting; materiality; Non-Representational Theory; peripheral vision; psychological aspects; trauma; uncanny
Afghanistan, 5
Albania, 7, 17, 145–163, 244, 252;
Albanian Communist Party, 153;
Albanianism, 145, 153
Aldeburgh (Suffolk, UK), 86, 92
Algeria, 29
ambivalence (Beck), 10–12, 19, 37, 53, 55, 78, 92, 98, 188, 199, 239, 247
Anderson, Ben, 132, 142
Angola, 5
anthropocene, 103, 111, 119
Appadurai, Arjun, 159, 160
Arch Daily, 238, 247
archaeology, 12, 14, 19–21, 36, 76, 90, 143, 145–163, 182, 196–197, 200, 240–241, 248–249, 251–252.
Area 51 (US), 234, 247n1
Ashmore, Wendy, 147, 162
Architecture Principe, 27
Armitage, John, 27, 29, 36, 72, 245, 247–248
Arnhem (Netherlands), 18, 215–217, 219–222, 225, 227, 229, 245;
battle of Arnhem, 216, 220
Army Corp of Engineers (US), 123–124
assaying history (Garrett), 177
Assmann, Jan, 171, 177–178, 180–181
Atlantic Wall (Atlantikwall), 7, 9, 15, 23–25, 27–30, 38, 58, 65, 104, 106, 235, 240, 245–246, 249
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) (UK), 92n1;
Aldermaston, 76, 237;
Orford Ness, 8, 11, 72n2, 75, 79–91
Atoombunker (Arnhem, Netherlands), 18, 215–216, 220, 221, 223, 224, 227–229, 238
Augé, Marc, 13, 19
Auschwitz, 104
autoethnography, 17, 113, 128, 177, 241, 244
Azaryahu, Moaz, 171, 182
Bachelard, Gaston, 26
Badiou, Alain, 49, 55
Baker, Frederick, 155, 157, 161
Ballantyne, Roy, 145, 154, 163
Ballard, J.G., 88
Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWs), RAF Fylingdales, UK, 72n6
Banhof, 237
Barnett, Lynn, 31, 35
Barnoud, Paul, 37
Barthes, Roland, 59, 70, 72
Bartolini, Nadia, 7, 10, 19, 236, 247
Battle, Laura, 86, 92
Bauman, Zygmunt, 11
Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (BLfD), 172, 181
Becher, Bernd & Hilla, 28, 36
Beck, Colleen M., 21
Beck, John, 7, 10–12, 14, 19, 28, 32, 37, 42, 45, 78, 82, 92, 196, 199, 233, 235–236, 239
Beckstead, Zachary, 134, 143
Bell, David, 197, 199
Benjamin, Andrew, 42, 55,
Benjamin, Walter, 13, 20, 32, 240
Bennett, Luke, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, 19, 23, 30, 34, 37, 78, 92, 168, 174–175, 178, 181, 187, 202, 207, 210, 214–215, 233, 235, 238, 242, 245, 248, 251
Bennett, Jane, 7, 10, 19, 135, 143
Berlin Wall, 3, 41, 155, 194, 203
Besio, Kathryn, 113, 128
Beuys, Joseph, 24, 36n3
B-ild (Dutch Architects), 228
Bille, Mikkel, 118, 128
Bingham, Nick, 53, 55
Bjørnskau, B., 102, 110
Bland, William B., 148, 161
Bogost, Ian, 16, 19
Booth, Kevin, 18, 201, 236, 242–245, 247, 251
Boswell, Rosabelle, 194, 199
Bourdieu, Pierre, 173, 181
Bourke, Joanna, 31, 37, 77, 92
Bouylan, Jessie, 235, 248
Bowers, Rachael, 18, 201, 236, 242–245, 247, 251
Braaksma, Patricia J., 178, 181
Bradby, Lawrence, 91, 93
Brault, Orlane, 37
Bruner, Edward M., 193, 199
Buchel, Christophe, 64
Buchli, Victor, 157–158, 161–162
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 107, 110
bunker, 1, 3–20, 23–31, 33–39, 41–43, 47, 50, 53, 55–58, 61–63, 67, 69–72, 75, 77, 79, 86, 88, 92, 95, 97, 108, 111, 113–122, 125, 127, 128, 146, 147, 149–152, 154–157, 159, 160, 163, 165, 169, 170, 172, 174–177, 179, 180, 185, 187, 190, 199, 201–202, 204–208, 210–215, 217–229, 233–249, 251;
as anomalous space, 217–220;
as contingency, 120;
decommissioned, 3, 61, 202;
defined, 6;
derelict, 61;
as exceptional space, 7;
funky, 237–239;
as semantically evasive, 235–237;
as survival machines, 159;
as tourist icon, 157.
See also bunker forms; bunker in landscape; myth; re-animation; redevelopment; re-use; redundancy; ruins; symbolism
Bunker 599 (Rietveld), 228
bunker forms:
cave, 10, 17, 29, 113–129, 243, 253;
command centre, 57, 60, 64, 113–122, 125–128, 187, 201–214, 234–237, 242–243;
lair, 237, 238, 241, 249;
mountain, 104–106, 117, 155, 237, 247;
pillbox, 7, 20, 89, 146–148, 149, 150–155, 156, 157–160, 244;
repository, 168–170, 235;
tunnel, 7, 17, 72, 100, 121, 127, 131–133, 135–142, 147, 150, 220, 222, 223, 244, 253.
See also Royal Observer Corps
bunker hunting, 12–15, 17, 23–25, 27–30, 33–36, 78, 174, 175, 178–180, 240–243.
See also bunkerology, embodied experience, enthusiasts, geocaching, urban exploration
bunker in landscape:
as liminal, 45, 59, 154,
as picturesque, 59, 81;
as political embodiment of state paranoia, 5, 17, 147–153, 234;
as relics, 65;
decommissioned, 3, 17, 61, 63, 114, 169, 198, 238, 251;
de-militarization, 132, 156;
imagined, 63–64;
in War on Terror, 241;
landscape aesthetics, 9, 14, 79;
merging into landscape, 153;
New Military Urbanism (Graham), 241;
proto- and pseudo-bunkers, 26, 28, 82;
seriality, 9;
The Zone, 88–90.
See also arch
aeology, ruins, symbolism
‘bunker mentality’, 7
bunkerization, 146, 151, 241
bunkerology, 12, 17, 19, 24, 27, 37, 78, 92, 127, 181, 242–243, 248
bunker studies, 241–243
Burke, Edmund, 42, 59–60, 72
Burton, Antoinette, 193, 199
Butz, David, 113, 128
Cambodia, 5
Campbell, Duncan, 5, 19
Caruth, Cathy, 45, 55
Casey, Edward, 44, 55
cave. See bunker forms
Chang, Cheng-Jieh, 136
Chernobyl, 77
China, 17, 131, 135–136, 149–150;
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 131;
Cultural Revolution, 149;
People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 131
clambering, 25–27, 100–101.
See also embodied experience, urban exploration
Clarke, Bob, 67, 72
Clifford, James, 115, 128
Clube, S.V.M., 101, 110
Cobra Mist (Richardson), 85, 88, 91–93
Cocroft, Wayne D., 6, 13, 19, 21, 168, 181, 194–196, 200, 203, 214
Cold War, 3, 5–21, 23, 29–36, 38, 41–43, 45, 47, 49, 50, 54, 55, 57–65, 67, 69–72, 75–80, 82, 83, 91, 98, 100, 104, 106, 113–115, 117, 120, 125–127, 129, 131–133, 141, 142, 145–147, 150, 152, 153, 157–160, 162, 167–178, 181, 185–203, 205, 206, 208–215, 218, 219, 222, 227, 228, 233–237, 239–249, 251–253
command centre. See bunker forms
communist, 17, 115, 131, 142, 145–148, 150, 151, 153–155, 157–162, 252
communities of practice (Wenger), 14
concrete, 6, 10, 100, 106, 108, 150, 185, 238
Conradson, David, 134, 143, 200
conspiracy theories, 234, 247n1
contamination, 87, 109, 205
Conte, Robert, 118, 120, 125, 128
Coronil, Fernando, 115–116, 128
Corsham (Wiltshire, UK) bunker complex, 234–235
Coste, Annelise, 64
Council for British Archaeology, 197
counterpoint, 17, 115
Coupland, Douglas, 6, 19
Craggs, Ruth, 15, 19, 116, 128
Crang, Mike, 55, 139, 140, 143, 170, 200
Creffield, Denis, 80, 81, 86