In the Ruins of the Cold War Bunker

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