The War Office: Everyday Environments and War Logistics

Abstract

If war is conducted largely on the field of logistics, how is the necessary level of involvement in the administrative staff maintained? How do those left behind on the ground remind themselves of how and why they fight? Abandoned office spaces on disbanded squadron facilities may give some clues. This new series of photographs was made at RAF Coltishall in May 2007. Contemporary artists and archaeologists are collaborating in an interdisciplinary investigation of the site during its closure.

Military landscapes

“…A related set of questions about military modes of seeing, of visuality, and of optics are also being addressed as geographers grapple with the complex relationships between visuality and geopolitics (see, for example, Campbell, 2007;Hughes, 2007;MacDonald, 2006;contributions to MacDonald et al, 2010). Although much of this work lies beyond the core concerns of landscape inquiries (although see Dunlop, 2008, on visualities and the administrative and logistics landscapes of airpower), explorations of the co-constitutive nature of geopolitics and visuality extend what we might think of as military landscapes. A military complex of technological systems for surveillance, civilian monitoring and targeting turn otherwise civilian spaces into potential battlespaces through their anticipatory readings and assessment (Graham, 2010).…”

‘The aerodrome’: Art, heritage and landscape at former RAF Coltishall

“…I have written elsewhere (Dunlop, 2008) on the paradoxical nostalgias of the flight simulator during this period of airbase closure; in this short piece I wish to discuss the simultaneous sense of idyll and of near-obsolete high technology which characterize military sites and testing zones.…”

Archaeologies of Internment

“…Our characterisation takes account of the area's former industrial and residential functionality, the new and adapted industrial buildings, the prison, the traces of closure, secrecy and surveillance, and the textures and contours of walkways, roads and hard-standings. Our photography, and the urge for photographic recording as archaeology, is influenced by our involvement with survey work at the former Royal Air Force (RAF) Station Coltishall (Cocroft and Cole 2007;Dunlop 2008), and knowledge of studies elsewhere, where artists perform a vital role in the recording of former militarised landscapes (Boulton 2009). …”