Dear colleagues,

Apologies for cross-posting. Please find details for an upcoming seminar talk on the 'militarised pastoral' which may be of interest. Both Black and Ihar will explore the critical heritage of military infrastructure in rural Scotland and England. 

-------------

Military Surplus, a recently launched CRASSH research network, is hosting its last seminar of Michaelmas term this​ Thursday, 30 November (5-7PM GMT). Scholar Zsuzsanna Ihar (University of Cambridge) and filmmaker Andrew Black (Film London) will discuss the pastoral genre in relation to the Scottish Highlands and Islands, highlighting the way in which popular depictions of the countryside have obscured, and continue to obscure, the activities of the military-industrial complex. Through multimodal and multisensorial interventions, they will re-purpose and re-politicise the genre, using the pastoral to examine the military’s (quiet) expansion into rural and peripheral spaces. They will examine munition dumps, garrisons, radar stations and missile testing ranges which brush against and merge with meadows, crofts, and natural reserves. 

*The Militarised Pastoral*

30 November 2023, 17:00–19:00 GMT 
Online (on Zoom)

https://zoom.us/j/93774725430?pwd=Y2FhNmsrUzgwajBMK2hIclUyb2U2UT09

Meeting ID: 937 7472 5430
Passcode: 425140

Please register here via https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/39818/ to attend. 

——————

Speakers: Zsuzsanna Ihar (University of Cambridge) & Andrew Black (Film London)

Abstracts

Zsuzsanna Ihar
Will-o’-the-wisps and missile plumes: Theorising time, war, and memory in a Cold War archipelago

In Hebridean folklore, there are numerous stories of travellers encountering spectral streaks and floating orbs of light when crossing bogs and marshes in the dead of night. Referred to as An Teine Mor (trans: ‘The Great Fire’), the atmospheric ghost light often served as a manadh – a warning or omen – to deter individuals from certain actions, paths, or decisions. This presentation takes up An Teine Mor, and its not-quite-material characteristics, to contemplate another seemingly evasive and elusive force in the Hebridean outer isles – that of militarisation. Despite hosting Europe’s largest military exercise since 1946, a deep range for complex weapons trials and in-service firings, several radar stations, as well as offshore munition dumps, the Hebridean archipelago is rarely thought of as site of military activity. By thinking with and through An Teine Mor, the presentation will argue that militarisation in the Hebrides appears in streaks, wisps, plumes, and traces – from the diffused light of rocket flames, the iridescent sheen of engine oil, to invisible asbestos fibres and anthrax spores. These immaterial and near-material residues of warfare will be examined through the use of both multimodal and multisensorial methods. Invoking an experimental form of academic storytelling, the presentation will also highlight the ways in which the ‘military-spectre’ alters and disrupts memories and recollections, shaping intimate relations between the local community, the landscape, and the more-than-human.

Andrew Black 
Tibby Bilton

“It’s a curious fact that Menwith Hill may be significant as an ancient site for astronomical observations – which gives it a sort of continuity with its signals-intelligence role. There’s an area on the base below the ‘golf balls’, where there are some stones – and it might have been a circle of stones – on a site called Tibby Bilton … the Americans removed the last stone to put an aerial on on the site.”

Black's 2023 film ‘On Clogger Lane’ explores the countryside surrounding an American satellite surveillance station in North Yorkshire. The above observation made by peace activist, Communist and local historian Anne Lee connects ancient and futuristic presences seeming to prefigure and echo each other through millennia. In this landscape, generational roots are entangled with stories of exploitation of workers, state appropriation of land, and visions of the devil. This talk will bring excerpts from ‘On Clogger Lane’ into conversation with perspectives from the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, where Black's films ‘Dàn Fianais’ and ‘Revenge Fantasy’ were made. Here, a strong oral tradition conveys a refusal of the intrusions of imperialist and capitalist power, and an attachment to communal forms of belonging and mutual responsibility, as well as a sensitivity to the otherworldly. Through informal discussion Black will explore how folk knowledge and old models of community specific to places with long collective memory could help us to understand and refuse the stultifying conservative narratives which are often now associated with our rural places, and imagine and institute ways of being resilient and attentive to each other and to our difficult histories.
 

——————

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the ACHSUKCHAPTER list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=ACHSUKCHAPTER&A=1

This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ACHSUKCHAPTER, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/