DAVID MANLEY Contents
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DAVID MANLEY Contents Acknowledgement 3 Abstract 4 Introduction 5 Urban Ambivalence 8 Monuments out of Time 14 The Citadel 22 Bunker Mentalities 29 Ballardian Typologies 44 A Hidden Presence 54 List of illustrations 57 References 58 3 Acknowledgements I would like to convey my warm appreciation to the following people for their invaluable contribution and support in the development of this project. Lynne Roberts Goodwin Cameron Petrie Samantha Suyono Loughlin Gleeson Miren Zarate David Manley Ambivalent Structures Abstract The research and accompanying studio practice titled Ambivalent Structures interrogates the latent connection of the bunker with the urban terrain, channelling its psychological influence while addressing contemporary anxieties regarding power and con- trol. Military bunker facilities have long been the subject of intense in- terest for artists and architects, particularly since the end of the Cold War. Their presence has been linked to discourse surrounding devel- opments in modernism, minimalism in art, and architectural brutalism. Bunker construction occurred on a massive scale during the Second World War with the building of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, a series of fortifica- tions that was intended to stretch along the entire west coast of Europe and Scandinavia. The Atlantic Wall’s construction employed new types of reinforced cement moulding technologies that are still in use. Imposing and monolithic, these structures retain a deeply ambivalent nature, as they can be at once places of security and danger, of refuge and warfare, and indeed of life and death. Cold War secrecy served only to heighten the bunker’s psychological power within the civilian population; their hidden presence fuelled the imagination of populist culture of the time in films such as Stanley Kubrick’sDr Strangelove (1964), while writers such as J.G. Ballard pondered their influence on urban infrastructure and the post-war utopian aspirations of city planners in works such as Concrete Island (1974) and Crash (1973). Here, manifestations of the bunker and its effect on the psychology of Ballard’s characters were conjured through the run-down tenement tower blocks, motorway exit ramps, multi-story car parks and pedestrian underpasses of the built environment. Ambivalent Struc- tures is a visual and textural exploration of the aftermath of moderni- ty through its attendant buildings and structures that are inextricably linked to the violence of war, pondering their psychological influence on the individual. 5 Introduction Ambivalent Structures considers the bunker as visu- al and psychological metaphor, situating its latent presence within a contemporary urban context. The conflicting nature of the bunker will be considered in light of Zygmunt Bauman’s critique in Modernity and Ambivalence (1995) and incorporating John Beck’s (2011) observa- tions on the bunker’s ability to resist architectural classification. It will be argued that the bunker has become a symbol of the ambivalence of modernity, and that its contradictory nature helps to sustain its intense interest and mystique within popular culture. Historical perspectives of the bunker and the emergence of ‘bunker mentalities’ 1 in societies will be explored through its evolu- tion in design and construction during the Second World War, its mass proliferation during the Cold War, and its contemporary influence on modernist architecture and popular culture: initially drawing from Paul Virilio’s Bunker Archeology (1994) and building on the metaphor through reference to Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove and Oliver Hirschbiegel’s filmDownfall (2004). Links will be established with contemporary urban structures and the case presented that they too retain a similar sense of ambivalence through their historical and technological connec- tions with the bunker and, as Ballard suggests, possess similar latent psychological influences, creating pockets of cognitive dissonance within the urban landscape; spaces that engender a sense of dissocia- tion and “estrangement” 2 from our everyday lives. The abject nature of the bunker as psychological prison will be examined through W.G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz (2001). This example will be used within a broader discussion of modernist interpretations of the bunker explored through the cinematic works of Luis Bunuel and Michael Haneke and linking their works to Jean-Paul Sartre’s text No Exit (1944), in addition to incorporating Luke Bennett’s (2011) theories of “hyper-organizational space” 3 and its effect on the individual and group psyche during times of perceived threat. The bunker’s strong links to modernism, minimalism in art and brutalism will be discussed with reference to the work of Jochen and Esther Shalev Gerz. Their 1 Bell, 2008: 1 2 Frost, 2013: 3 3 Bennett, 2011: 158 David Manley Ambivalent Structures sculpture, Monument Against Fascism (1986), acts to neutralize the violence of the bunker by using its brutal aesthetic in defiance of past atrocities. This example will be used to support the notion of the bunker’s strong connection to the deeper subterranean spaces of the human psyche, something that operates as a powerful metaphor, highlighting the potential in all of us for positions of isolationism and paranoia. The development of bunker mentalities within organizational structures and hierarchies will be used to broaden the scope of the metaphor and support Michel Foucault’s analysis of power and control and their relationship to the built environment, thereby strengthening the case that architecture plays a significant role in the development and expression of human behaviour. The studio practice will explore remnants of the Cold War within urban terrains, incorporating historical and contemporary issues of imaging unverifiable urban landscapes, interiors and facades within a post-brutalist environment. Rather than creating images of bunkers per se, the practice work interrogates the bunker’s contemporary incarnations as referent, conjuring their psychological influence. An overarching theme of the research is the synthesis and incorporation of J.G. Ballard’s musings on urbanism and the psychological influ- ence of architecture on the individual, a potent theme in many of his works. An interpretation and re-iteration of the contemporary urban environment will explore the idiosyncratic nature of the bunker and its strong association with architectural Brutalism through photography, sculpture and video installation, drawing from Ballard’s observations. Here, links will be established with my own studio practice, situating the work within the current discourse of modernism and its relationship to the violence, visible traces and impact of the Second World War. Ultimately, the practice work is concerned with the aftermath or post-humanism that many of Ballard’s works allude to, something inextricably linked to the bunker metaphor; its latent presence a reminder of humanity’s equal capacity to create and destroy. The redemptive qualities of the bunker as a survival machine will be used to call into question notions of the Apocalypse, a central theme in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) and Ballard’s The Crys- tal World (1966). Siobhan Lyons (2013) postulates two alternatives to 7 this end: redemption from a Doomsday scenario through the reliance on some form of technological machine that somehow saves humanity at the brink of disaster, and Ballard’s post-humanism, where the end of the world is seen as the natural order of things; the universe will continue to exist without humanity and we are not the central focus for its existence. The research will argue that the latter has its own redemptive quality, as it frees us from a state of perpetual crisis and a descent towards a bunker mentality during times of stress and perceived threat. This scenario is perhaps avoidable through an understanding of the historical narrative of the bunker and through its relationship with the darker aspects of the human psyche. David Manley Ambivalent Structures Urban Ambivalence It is important to present a detailed analysis of the term “ambivalence” and its relationship with modernity, as the structures and spaces imaged within the research project are conceptually linked to this discourse. In The Ambivalence of Modernity (1993), Zygmunt Bauman describes ambivalence as the discomfort we feel when we are unable to assign a particular order or classification to things. He argues that the need to classify in a world of chaos could be seen as the driving force of the modern world. 4 As one set of problems is solved another level of complexity is generated, something that was not anticipated by the technological advances that were designed to deal with the initial problem. Bauman argues that ambivalence is the by-prod- uct of this process, referring to it as “the great waste of modernity”; 5 something produced through our relentless drive to assign order in an otherwise chaotic world. Indeed, Bauman describes this as a “war on ambivalence”,6 as paradoxically the need to assign ever-increasing complexities of order creates more disorder and even more complexity that in turn fosters more ambivalence. But it is not just the discomfort we feel generated through a quest for order that is of concern here. When we extrapolate this thoroughly modern condition, something Bauman argues is characterized by a relentless march forward, we realize that any place of arrival is temporary. The development of modernity’s exponential complexity occurs not because it strives for more,