embassy as modern fortress

image: Kieran Timberlake illustration in Wired

Kieran Timberlake´s winning design for the new US embassy in London features a number of security measures of 11th century fortresses.

Wired magazine interviews an expert in medieval military history that analyzes the parallels of the modern design´s defenses to 1- keep, 2- motte, 3- bailey and 4- moat.

link to article

Kabelbrand

Max Brand (1886-1980) was an Austrian composer and pioneer of synthesizer and electronic music. The moogtonium or Max Brand synthesizer is an early synthesizer prototype built by Bob Moog between 1967-60 for the exiled composer in New York. The rare synthesizer prototype was Moog´s interpretation of a trautonium.

Article on the origin and rediscovery of the moogtonium on the moog-foundation website.

The moogtonium was one of the main exhibits in the 2008 show Zauberhafte Klangmaschinen / Magical Sound Machines on the histories of sound generator, sound recorders and sound transmitters at the Kulturfabrik Hainburg (a repurposed tobacco factory), curated by IMA, the Institute of Media Archeology.

The instrument is part of the Max Brand archive.

Watch it being played live at the Ars Electronica (festival for arts, technology and society held in Linz, Austria) by Clemens Hausch and Gerald Krist. To listen to more compositions on this fascinating instrument, as well as Brand´s own, check out the CD "Kabelbrand- sounds from the Max Brand synthesizer" released on the label Moozak.

split

Photographer, writer and documentarian Camilo José Vergara is renowned for his photographic documentation of American slums and decaying urban neighbourhoods, often returning to the same areas to track the decline and development of specific buildings and urban environments over time.
In a recent photo-essay he explores the striking contrast between inhabited and deserted architecture, documenting the effects of declining urban population and property deterioration in paired townhouses in Camden, N.J.

image: 908 N. 24^th St., Camden, 2004. source

image: The same spot, five years later.

The boarded-up house has been demolished. 908 N. 24^th St., Camden, 2009.source

link (via dorknob designs)

Burning the roots of Western Culture

City on Fire, Coliseum, Rome 2010

A video installation by Thira Hilden and Pio Diaz

www.cityonfire.org

"City on fire - burning the roots of Western culture" is a series of site specific monumental video installations created by the artistic collaboration of Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz. The true to scale video illusions are projected on monuments and buildings, making them appear in fiery blazes.

To underscore a neglection of the transitory aspect of buildings and man-made monuments as expressions of western self-understanding and identity in a symbolic act of non-destructive cultural aggression, the artists pick sites that have become part of the canon of physical manifestations of western culture.

This weekend (Sept 17-19, 2010) it is the Coliseum in Rome, the axiomatically accepted cradle of European culture, that is scheduled to go up in flames.

Other locations have included Scandinavia´s biggest museum, the ARos Museum of Art in Århus, Denmark, the churches Vor Frue Cathedral in Copenhagen and St.Katharinenkirche in Frankfurt, Germany, the iconic Trevi fountain and a library for Classical Studies in Rome.

link to project "City on Fire"

squatter´s cenotaph

Hausmania, Oslo-2010. photo: Arne B. Langleite

Hausmania is a selv-governed cultural complex in Oslo, Norway that evolved out of a block of houses in classic turn-of-the-century style taken over by squatters and underground art collectives.

In the summer of 2010 the local authorities have claimed back and seized one of the squatted buildings.

To prevent an imminent re-occupation by the squatters all apertures that would facilitate access to the building were closed off. The created effect is a a cenotaph for the Hausmania movement, a hermetically sealed block of concrete, reminiscing of a cross between James Turrell Mendota Hotel and Rachel Whiteread´s House.

Mendota Hotel, sealed off- 1966. Click for link to BBC Radio program "Seeing the Light with James Turrell".

Rachel Whiteread, House- 1993. Videostill- click to watch video the EYE:Rachel Whiteread about the creation of "House".

California landmarks for sale

image source: wikipedia commons

To ameliorate his state´s fiscal crisis by up to $1 billion, in 2009, California state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed to sell a number of state assets, including San Quentin State Prison, the Los Angeles Memorial Colliseum, the Orange County Fairgrounds and other landmark properties. article

putting a lid on it

"Beneath this concrete dome on Runit Island (part of Enewetak Atoll), built between 1977 and 1980 at a cost of about $239 million, lie 111,000 cubic yards (84,927 cubic meters) of radioactive soil and debris from Bikini and Rongelap atolls. The dome covers the 30-foot (9 meter) deep, 350-foot (107 meter) wide crater created by the May 5, 1958, Cactus test. Note the people atop the dome." The Brookings Institution. via pruned

After the nuclear testing is over the dilemma arises on how to clean up any highly toxic radioactive leftovers. In a large scale equivalent of brushing things under the carpet, contaminated soil has been filled into a crater conventiently created by another nuclear test, before slapping a giant concrete lid on top.

The US Department of Energy aims to successfully clean all sites presently contaminated by "millions of gallons of radioactive waste", "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water" by 2025. The United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable.
On the problematics of radioactive waste, logistic and otherwise.


image: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the Department of Energy´s underground nuclear storage facility.
source: United States Department of Energy, screenshot.

"Ten thousand years from now, the last remaining momument of the U.S. military-industrial complex could well be the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant." article in WIRED magazine


image: SPIKE FIELD, a forest of menancing concrete spikes.
Proposal for sculpture on contaminated site.
Concept by Michael Brill, art by Safdar Abidi.
source: screenshot WIREDarticle

The longterm toxicity of radioactively contaminated material raises the strange moral issue on how to communicate the danger of contaminated sites to future generations that may have developed a different understanding of how to interpret a warning visual.
The planners of today have to imagine tactics to create a deterring genius loci for these modern cult sites of invisible danger and dread to keep the location and its physical contents taboo for the next thousands of years, resulting in the conceptualisation of markers and perimeter monuments and the development of an elaborate warning system by a conclave of scientists, linguists, anthropologists and sci-fi thinkers assembled by the US Department of Energy.
article in WIREDmagazine.



Approximate locations of information centers or large monuments (4 large circles) and perimeter monuments (small black circles) around the surface boundaries of the repository area. The smaller round circles with radiation symbols indicate the general locations of additional ground markers.
See also "The Monumental Task of Warning Future Generations"
See also article by Ulrich Beck in The Guardian " All aboard the nuclear power superjet. Just don't ask about the landing strip"- quote: "Climate change and the oil crisis are being used to project atomic energy as a green panacea. In fact it is a reckless gamble".

life in the Achterhuis

An interactive 3D model of the attic that hid Anne Frank and her companions from July 6, 1942 to August 4, 1944.

link

Hinterbrühl - the grotto and its suppressed past as a concentration camp

Hinterbrühl in southern Lower Austria is the site of the largest
subterranean lake in Europe. It was also a satellite camp of the
Mauthausen KZ and housed a gigantic underground war factory.
In 1912 a botched underground blasting operation of the local gypsum
mine caused 20 million litres of water to gush forth from behind the
rock, flooding the lower level galleries and adits, putting a definite
stop to production.


image: screenshot from www.seegrotte.at

The lake, result of the flooding of a subsequently abandonded mine is described as a "natural monument" on the website (definition of natural monument).

The mine remained closed for years, but gained public interest in
1932, when it opened as a tourist attraction after an international
team of cave explores ventured to make it accessible to the general
public as a show mine.


image: www.seegrotte.at


image: www.seegrotte.at

The 'Seegrotte Hinterbrühl' has been visited by more than 10 million
people. It boasts 'Austria's first Barbara-Museum', venerating St.
Barbara, the patron saint of miners. It was one of the film locations
of Disney's "The three Musketeers" (1993).
Tours are held everyday in several languages and include a 'romantic motor boat trip on the largest subterranean lake of Europe' – if navigating through a flooded former weapons factory/work camp, between the plastic waterlilies, past grotto walls lit in garishly bright colours and a pimped out gondola well fit for Lohengrin is your idea of romance, that is.


click for panorama of underground boat tour

The 'Great Lake', 60 meter underground after passing a labyrinth of tunnels and halls, has a water surface area of approx. 6200m2, and an average depth of 1.20m with the deepest point being a 12m shaft. The lake is fed by seven subterranean springs, but has no natural drain. Each night 50-60 000 liters of water are pumped to keep waterlevels at 1.20m.


image: screenshot from www.seegrotte.at

The subterranean location protected against targeted bomb raids and was consequently requisitioned for the Nationalsocialist wareffort. Under the codename "Languste" the German 'Heinkel Werke' operated an underground aircraft factory deep in the tunnels and adits that were kept dry by continous pumping.
One of many satellite camps of Mauthausen concentration camp was opened in the caverns. At first 800, then 1800 forced labourers and prisoners slaved away in 24-hour shifts, producing parts for the Me 262 jet fighter aka Schwalbe and the 'Heinkel HE 162 Salamander' akaVolksjäger, one of the first jet fighters and also one of the secret weapons of the Luftwaffe.


image: parts of planes produced in the underground factory exhibited in the tunnel. source.

The camp was dissolved in the last days of the war. Seven bombs were intentionally set off inside the mine, destroying the interior.
The 1800 prisoners of the camp were sent on a death march back to Mauthausen, only few survived.
About 50 prisoners remaining in the camp's hospital ward were killed by an injection of petrol because of their inability to walk.
Sources:
"Die Seegrotte und ihre verdrängte Vergangenheit als Konzentrationslager" http://no-racism.net/article/2268/
wikipedia-article in German with info conc. a boat accident with four drowning victims in 2004: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seegrotte
http://www.geheimprojekte.at/t_hint.html
the lake grotto´s homepage www.seegrotte.at
An interview (in German) with one of the last surviving Me262 pilots of Jagdverband 44

Goli Otok - an abandonded prison island in the Adriatic

Between the Croatian tourist islands of Rab and Krk , in the Adriatic sea lies a barren island, two by two kilometers in size, with strange ruins of prisons, bunkers and industrial sites.
Until the fall of communism Goli Otok, "the naked island" was a taboo in former Yugoslavia.
Today the island´s history is still an uncomfortable topic for many.
Austrian journalist Reinhard Grabner and camera man Franz Schwaighofer have now produced the first film about the island: "Strahota- Die Geschichte der Gefängnisinsel Goli Otok".
In 1949, the entire island was officially made into a high-security, top secret prison and labor camp run by the authorities of SFR Yugoslavia.

Goli Otok "was the private concentration camp of the Communist Party, more specifically: of Marshall Tito" says a former inmate, one of the contemporary witnesses interviewed for the film. Starting in 1948 critics not conforming to the system and political prisoners were confined to the island and subjected to forced heavy labor and tortorous abuse.
From the mid-60ies when also convicted criminals were imprisoned on the island "the prison situation normalised".

Over the course of four decades, apart from cell tracts and living quarters for the guards, the forced labour of the prisoners built a whole industrial zone, a number of factories for the production of furniture and tiles, even a pig farm that supplied the surrounding tourist islands. Former prisoners interviewed in the film tell about torture and abuse, and compare the conditions and the treatment with Guantánamo.
The island was eventually evacuated in 1988, leaving the facilities to decay.
"Strahota - Die Geschichte der Gefängnisinsel Goli Otok" premiered on May 5 2009.
A Croatian version is in the making. Alfred Pal, a former prisoner of Goli Otok plans to open an exhibition in Zagreb in July 2009.

Sources for further historic background and original photodocumentary material:
article in the Austrian newspaper derstandard.at (in German)
website about the film "Strahota- Die Geschichte der Gefängnisinsel Goli Otok
goliotok.com photodocumentation about the island
"Golit Otok- hell in tourist´s paradise" , photodocumentation about the island Goli Otok
"Die nackte Insel" a visit of Goli Otok- article in "Neue Zürcher Zeitung"
historical-political background (pdf, in German) from www.fraumuennich.de
"Goli Otok- hell in the Adriatic" book review

future ruins

Einstürzende Neubauten: Die Befindlichkeit des Landes (2000)

click for video - song starts at 0:55

The electro-acoustic noise band "Einstürzende Neubauten" wrote this lament as a response to Berlin´s urban renewal projects initiated after the fall of the Berlin wall to heal or cover over the rift in the fabric of a divided city.

Alles nur künftige Ruinen

Material für die nächste Schicht

Die neuen Tempel haben schon Risse

Einst wächst Gras auch über diese Stadt

über ihren letzten Schicht.

(english translation)

Across the scarfaced terrain, slowly disappearing, only phantom pain remains scarcely audible foul laughter seeps out of the red Info Box. In the graves there is quiet turning. Nothing but future ruins, material for the next layer, Melancholia, mon cher, floating over the new city and over the land. Over the control centres, over the stubbly fields of concrete, over the secret net of bunkers, that refuses to be wiped out. Marlene go home! Over the Marlene-​​Dietrich-​​Platz. The new temples are already cracked, future ruins, one day grass will also grow over the city, over its last layer. Melancholia, mon cher, floats over the new city over the land. In the lacerated skies, ploughed to bits by the jets` manoeuvers, she hangs with wide spread wings, sleep less and with frozen gaze, pointing at rubble, behind her the future piling up. Slowly rising higher and higher, at last she surveys the entire land. What is the lay of the land?