The Firebugs of Kreuzberg

Retain your memories
but détourn them
so that they correspond with your era.

Asger Jorn

We are in Berlin travelling on the U-Bahn to Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzberg. It is a gloriously warm April morning with fists of sunlight starting to punch through the clouds. From the elevated train tracks we can survey the sweeping spread of the city below. In the foreground, a graffiti inscribed, cubist assemblage written on to the earth. “How do they manage to get up there to paint it? asks R, pointing to a 3-D effect trompe l’oeil covering the entire gable end of a tall building. A and I marvel at the scale and ambition. An exploding riot of colour and illusion. We both shrug our shoulders…

I had been in Kreuzberg the previous evening at a gig in the HAU 2 theatre complex. (As an aside, I was delighted to discover later that this building was the original site of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab formed by Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Boris Schaak in 1968. More on this below if interested. (1)). I didn’t have much time to stroll around the streets beforehand but picked up a little of the night ambiance. Clearly the zest to inscribe almost any available surface with graffiti and street art was alive and well. I realised that my previous visit to Berlin had been when the Wall was still standing and Kreuzberg was the beating heart of a chaotic, edgy, alternative radicalism. An enclave of squatters, artists and musicians, living cheek by jowl with the, largely Turkish, immigrant population. At the time it felt like some bunkered interzone within the island of Berlin. A city trapped and adrift in topography, history and cold war paranoia. Inter-railing around Europe, I remember having to scrape up the Deutschmarks to buy a ticket and visa to allow travel through the DDR from Hamburg. Walking out of Zoo Station with a head full of Berlin tropes: Bowie, Iggy, Lou Reed and Christiane F. I could imagine witnessing scenes of Blixa Bargeld and Nick Cave holding court in the bars of SO36 underneath the watch towers. On reflection, a romanticised, pop-culture depiction of the city shaped more by the NME than by any history or guide-book.

Around twenty-five years later I’m walking out of Kottbusser Tor station with the family still carrying these ghosts of memory. It feels a bit surreal to experience the bright sunshine and languid air of the street as we set off in search of the Turkish market down on the banks of the Landwehrkanal. We pass the grocery stores and a few cafes where groups of men (and it is all men) are sitting outside sipping Turkish coffee and gossiping. It’s only a short walk to the canal and it evidently becomes apparent that we have either got the day or our directions wrong. There is no sign of any Turkish market. Perhaps Bowie, Iggy and Blixa can help guide us? Feed us a few signs? However, R is already off. A nine-year old is not going to hang around whilst our putative tour guides attempt to get their shit together.

♦

Unburdened by worldly cares, unfettered by learning, free of ingrained habit, negligent of time, the child is open to the world.

Yi-Fu Tuan

Children are natural and consummate psychogeographers. They can happily drift through any environment, urban or rural, seeking out and following the signs of place that speak to them. With the city as potential playground R, starts to saunter on ahead of us, leading the drift, although, of course, not aware or caring that this is what is happening. We wander along the tree-lined canal path for a good stretch and apart from the dog shit, and occasional jogger, the city takes on an almost rural feel. Bowie, Iggy and Blixa are struggling to keep up. I think they may have stopped for a fag. The sunlight is clearly not agreeing with them.

I could feel the interest of our spectral trio dissolve even further as we sat down on a bench to marvel at two magnificent white swans and a group of mallards bobbing on the canal. “How do the swans keep so white in the city?” A pleasure boat chugs past and the gentle wake lip-lips against the canal sides. Our quiet reverie is broken when the larger swan rises out of the water, and extends its full wingspan. For a moment it looks as if the wingtips will almost touch either side of the canal. A few strong beats and the swan takes to the air. We wonder where it can be heading and whether the birds flew freely between East and West when the Wall was up.

Against a riot of cubist, Kreuzberg colour
– “Fuck Yuppies – Reclaim the Streets”
a white swan rises from the water
outstretched wings unfurling,
almost pushing
the canal walls apart.

We can feel ourselves being pulled into another city world as a ladybird lands on A’s arm. I love how ladybirds always look hand painted. After watching it run over her skin, it pauses to open its tiny wings as if basking in the sun. R lets it run on to her fingers and kneels down to reunite the hand daubed, smudge of colour with the greenery beneath the lime trees. She discovers the bustling activities of an ant colony and we observe the industry of the leaf carrying comrades, marching in their regimented lines – lugging, organising, creating. Sucked in closer to the unfolding drama of this animistic, micro world, we start to notice other flecks of red and black moving amongst the earthy shades of leaf mould. They are not ladybirds. We are looking at hordes of small insects that are completely unknown to us. Some scurry around alone, whilst others pile on top of each other to accumulate into little shuffling balls of red and black. Too absorbed in the moment, we ‘forget’ to take a picture of them. It is only once we are home that we eventually manage to find an image and identify these mysterious little creatures as firebugs. From now on they will be known as The Firebugs of Kreuzberg.

Time has dissolved as we eventually head away from the canal and start to re-enter Kreuzberg street life. We start to notice the hum of cars again. A Mad Max biker type walks past with a tiny dog on a pink lead. The dog is sporting a bandanna. Our drift takes us up the entire length of Oranienstrasse, the main street of the district. It is still pretty quiet in daylight and we pass the door of SO36, the club where Bowie and Iggy used to hang out and, by now, have probably once again, taken refuge. R has commandeered the camera and is now taking photographs, still drifting through a city more akin to Hayao Miyazaki’s animistic universe than my one populated with spectral ghosts. The signs are speaking:

The Détourned Red Bulls of Oranienstrasse

The Goddess and Protector of Oranienstrasse

The Visitor (detail from the side of a parked van)

We eventually return full circle and ascend the steps back up to Kottbusser Tor station. Our quest to find Turkish markets, and gain enlightenment from Bowie, Iggy and Blixa has failed. They have all remained spectral and elusive. Our drift has pulled us into another dimension of Kreuzberg. One of canal paths, white swans, mallards, ants, and détourned red bulls. Above all, we have discovered and witnessed something mysterious and new. The red and black insects that we now know as The Firebugs of Kreuzberg.

That’s all from the Berlin holiday. It’ll be back to Fife next. Possibly Cowdenbeath!

Now playing: Kluster – Klopfzeichen

♦ ♦

(1) HAU 2 and The Zodiak Free Arts Lab

I was excited to learn that, after a hiatus of twelve years, Keith Rowe, Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg (Pita) and Pimmon were reconvening their curiously named Afternoon Tea project for one night only in Kreuzberg. It was delightful happenstance to discover that this was happening on one of the nights of our holiday. I headed down to the HAU 2 venue and certainly wasn’t disappointed. One long piece saw this stellar ensemble layer up a set of dark, fractured shards of glitch improv, punctuated with blankets of shimmering serenity. A deep, meditative, all embracing sound. An unfolding. Ambarchi sat almost motionless unleashing his trademark sonic ‘depth charges’. The aural equivalent of watching and feeling a lava lamp. The bass resonance of the note entering through the feet and traveling up and out of the body. It was also good to see Keith Rowe having to play in a much louder and busier sound environment than the last couple of times I’ve encountered him. Fennesz couldn’t help but attempt to excavate and instil some melodic fragments into the proceedings whilst Rehberg and Pimmon intervened with pincer movements of laptop noise assault. All in all a fabulous event to witness and experience in the dark, minimal space of HAU 2.

The happenstance of this event was further enhanced when I later discovered that HAU 2 was actually the original site of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab or Zodiac Club, formed by Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Boris Schaak in 1968. Whilst only open for a few months, the Zodiak was a melting pot where “freaks and avant-gardists of all stripes could enjoy live psychedelia, free jazz, free performance and freakout”. (A1). It was a space also directly responsible for the emergence of Kluster (Schnitzler/Roedelius/Moebius) and Tangerine Dream, at that time with Schnitzler and Klaus Schulz in the ranks. This early incarnation of the Tangs is light years away from the vapid new-age pap that they later embraced in the 1980s.

The first few Kluster albums were engineered by a young Conny Plank who brought his experience of working with Edgar Varese to give some shape and coherence to the brutalist improvised chaos of this embryonic kosmische music. With the subsequent exit of Schnitzler and a later name change to Cluster, the sound took on a softer edge and the recording of classic kosmische albums such as Cluster II, Zuckerzeit, Sowiesoso and Cluster & Eno. The Zodiak also hosted performances by, amongst others, Agitation Free, Ash Ra Tempel, Human Being, Peter Brotzmann and Alexander Von Schlippenbach.

I love it when buildings can reveal their embedded memories like this. From a few months activity, the ripples from the epicentre are still being felt.

(A1) Nikolaos Kotsopoulos (Ed), (2009), Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and It’s Legacy, (London: black dog publishing).

This Land…

◊

This land

these rocks and stones

vessels of deep time

being before

being inscribed

in landscape

before being

named and claimed

as landscape.

This land

a made place

a place made

to build, dwell

settled.

Gone now

gone. Only

ghosts and bocans

sounding

the stones over

peat bog, moss

moor and lichen.

Breathe and feel

the chiliastic serenity

of this uncanny land.

◊

I rediscovered this photograph recently which was taken a couple of years ago at Machrie Moor on the Isle of Arran. We were on holiday and I went out at around 6.00am to go for a walk before the family were up. It’s about 2.5km to the stones from the closest road, which is long enough to immerse yourself in the feeling of the place. The photograph is of the main grouping of stones which stand amongst a ritual landscape consisting of seven stone circles, several chambered cairns and hut circles. A highly evocative liminal landscape to wander alone in the thin morning light wrapped in light drizzle. Whilst written at a different time of the day, I cannot better the feeling described by John McArthur in The Antiquities of Arran (1861):

We have never witnessed a wilder and more grandly solemn scene than these old circles on the Mauchrie Moor, looming in shadowy indistinctiveness of an autumn moonlight…as we wandered amongst the old ruins, the weirdly stirring legends of the past haunted our mind, til the wreaths of mist seemed to float about like shadowy phantoms and the circling monoliths and hoary cromlech appeared to rise from the heath, like ghosts of the heroes of old, bending around the grave of their buried chief.

On my way back to the road, I’m reflecting on the tales of local folklore and particularly the stories of the bocans (malign spirits) which are said to inhabit the area. I’m rolling some sheep trintle in my hand – those soft wisps of wool which get snagged on fences or whin. It was as quiet as a remote landscape could be. Only the occasional bird call, a tuft of wind, the soft fizz of drizzle. Amongst all the greens and browns, I’m distracted by an impressive growth of witches butter, that bright yellow, almost golden fungus and head over for a closer look. I’m just about to step over a large tuft of moor grass, when, as is their wont, a pheasant takes wing from almost underneath my foot, squawking like a banshee. As the bird ascends in that awkward, unbalanced, flapping squall a tail feather whirligigs down from the sky which I manage to catch just before it hits the ground.

A gift from the moor dwellers to soothe my pounding heart.

Now playing: Eliane Radigue – Koumé, the third part of Trilogie de la Mort.

Bouncing on Sacrilege: Deller, Debord and Jumping for Joy

It is futile to search in our theories of architecture or dérive for any other motive than the passion for play.

Guy Debord (1)

As we enter Glasgow Green, my daughter takes aim, like an archer pulling a bowstring and points to the horizon. “There it is!” We both follow the trajectory of the imaginary arrow and gaze over the vast expanse of green common land. From all directions, ant-like threads of people are drifting towards the iconic structure of Stonehenge sitting in the landscape. The lines of people are converging and congregating around the monument and we can hear the distant sounds of carnival. Feeling the totemic pull of the stones, we set off to join them. This is why we have come.

Except this Stonehenge is Jeremy Deller’s ultimate bouncy castle version. An interactive art installation named Sacrilege and part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. Such is the popularity of Sacrilege, that, on arrival, we are assigned to one of the two holding ‘pens’ which allow up to one hundred people, at a time, to assemble and wait for a fifteen minute ‘interactive experience’ with the exhibit. As we sit in the sunshine, and soak up the celebration taking place amongst the stones, it really is a joy to watch the utter delight on faces as they attempt to run, jump, roll, lie or simply walk. Toddlers are happy to bounce up and down on the spot whilst the older kids are going off like pressure cookers, doing cartwheels, forward rolls, playing tig and body slamming into the iconic henge. Adults are given licence to do pretty much the same if they can keep up. A tribe of teenage goths stick to the perimeter, appearing to be disoriented by the brilliant sunshine and riot of lurid green plastic. Some pilgrims simply take refuge at the base of a stone and observe.

What also contributes to the Sacrilege experience is how the area is completely cleared between pen changeovers. For a short period of time the empty installation is replete with possibility, creating a sense of playful anticipation in the crowd as shoes are kicked off, jerseys discarded and bags are heaped in piles. The good-humoured security crew attempt to enforce their mock authority as they patrol the ‘control zone’ between crowd and structure, yakking into their walkie talkies. An anarchic youngster unable to contain herself, sneaks under the rope and makes a dash for the centre before being retrieved, kicking and screaming, by a slightly embarrassed parent. The heid bummer security guard with the megaphone barks out instructions (“no shoes, heavy bags, human sacrifice”) and the rope is finally dropped with all the ceremony of an Olympic starting gun. It’s a mad, mad rammy to clamber on to the structure and within seconds all ontological baggage is released by the sheer thrill of being and bouncing in the moment. When our turn comes around we (I!) soon find that fifteen minutes of plastic stone hi-jinks is pretty exhausting but exhilarating. We are part of a communal assemblage, literally jumping for joy. Sacrilege indeed.

I’m not overly familiar with Deller’s work, but afterwards it struck me that there is a lot more going on with this bouncy castle than at first may appear. I’m reminded of Ralph Rumney and Guy Debord’s attraction to the ludic ideas of Huizinga who proposed that spontaneity, play and festival should be a vital part of daily life and a potentially transformative agent to break free from the ‘stultifying nature of boring, non-ludic life’. Hussey suggests that Huizinga’s arguments had a revolutionary significance for Debord who was intrigued by the suggestion that games or spontaneous play could be experimental forms of new social behaviour. Rumney claims to have introduced Huizinga’s Homo Ludens to Debord which was instrumental in providing him with a vocabulary for thinking about and anticipating ‘the construction of situations’. If nothing else, Deller has certainly constructed a situation. I’m also reminded of Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque whereby the participation in carnival can remove individuals from the social hierarchies of everyday non-carnival life and allow the exercise of normally repressed energies to flower. Perhaps Sacrilege can be viewed as a practice of Situationist détournement. By hi-jacking the iconic image of Stonehenge, and all of its associated cultural baggage, Deller has created a new artwork that celebrates free assembly, mass appeal and the carnivalesque. Perhaps more importantly it is playful, fun, cheeky and joyous. Not terms that would leap to mind should you visit the original Wiltshire version these days. I understand that Sacrilege is now heading to ‘the Olympics’ and it will be interesting to observe whether the Glasgow experience will be ‘allowed’ to translate to a very different cultural space. Will anyone be able to pitch up at will, freely assemble and take part? We shall observe with interest.

And as we join the dehydrated but elated crowd drifting over the green common land to the winter gardens of the People’s Palace, we also take the chance to view the people’s history of Glasgow. A history of grim social conditions and top-down imposed planning failures, leavened with histories of resistance. My daughter is particularly taken with two iconic artefacts from popular culture: Billy Connolly’s banana boots and Alex Harvey’s leather jacket. Two performers, who also know/knew something about invoking the carnivalesque.

So here we are, with freedom
within our sweaty, greedy, grasps.
So remember this, boys and girls,
when freedom comes along…
DON’T pish in the water supply…

Alex Harvey

Now playing: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Live

References:

(1) Guy Debord, ‘Architecture and Play’ Potlach no. 20 (May 30, 1955).

(2) Andrew Hussey, (2001), The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord (London, Jonathan Cape).

Berlin dérive – Tiergarten

Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.

Walter Benjamin

awaken
to the spooling thread
of a blackbird’s raga
gravity loosens and
Berlin floats – just a little

just off the Ku’damm
a corporate glass palace
with outdoor aviary
squawks and fireworks of
green and red, caged
and displayed as trophies.

did the birds
of East and West
sing different songs?
can walls ever
constrain the birds?

that moment when
subterranean shackles
are shattered and
the S-Bahn explodes
into light.

drifting back from
the bauhaus-archiv
having just read
of the stormtroopers
arriving on 11th April 1933

the bauhaus is closed
but minds and ideas
continue to expand

Tiergarten

ANY CHARACTER HERE

In the old hunting forest
under the gaze of
the golden angel
quiet stillness
mute graffiti bunker

I could be the last
person on earth

footprints in
the children’s sandbox
a trace of presence
a presence of absence

III

the open-air museum
of street lamps

a chronology of gas
technology and progress

a timeline

illuminating a history
of human darkness.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

her skull shattered
and a bullet in the head
Rosa sinks under
the dark water of the
Landwehr canal
her flickering flame
snuffed out

distant sparks kindle…

ANY CHARACTER HERE

blue stars are pushing through
but today huddle for warmth

blackbirds, finches,
and a leering zoo
hyena for company.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Now playing: Einstürzende Neubauten – Strategies Against Architecture III (1991 – 2001).

Rosyth Edgelands Dérive

We are in dangerous territory, walking westward out of the town of Rosyth, along the A985, one of ‘Britain’s killer roads’. This arterial incision into the connective tissue of the Rosyth edgelands is to fully engage with the disruptive polarities emanating from two monolithic structures, which have recently appeared on either side of the road. There is a real sense that the landscape, skyscape and mindscape have all been irretrievably altered. Whether this is benign or malevolent who can say? It is this that we must investigate and address head-on with our dérive. Establish relations, resist, remap, and reclaim as necessary.

As we set off, along the ridgeline of the A985, there is an undercurrent of fear that a vortex of radiant, colliding energies may threaten to rip us, stalking walkers, apart or even lure us into the path of oncoming traffic on the killer road. This is a risk that we are prepared for and must take.

♦

The first stretch of road between two roundabouts is almost classic edgeland topography. On the right hand side, the small favela of allotments, with waves of canes, poles, pallet fencing and water butts; shanty sheds and corrugated iron knitted together with plastic pipework. There is a disordered/orderliness about the place; a charivari of utility and resourceful exchange, which resists the carefully manicured garden porn displayed in garden centres and lifestyle magazines. You can tell that this is land that is worked, loved and loves back.

On the other side of the road, past the football pitch, stands the ‘old Lexmark building’, supposedly the location of ‘the factory’ in Gregory Burke’s play Gagarin Way. We have investigated this building before and continue to monitor its energy levels , but no sign of the smoked salmon fishes as yet.

As we traverse over the second roundabout, there are clear intimations that the interzone between the town and edgelands has been breached. For the car driver, flooring it off the roundabout and opening up to the straight road ahead it’s as if the gravitational pull of the town loses its grip, supplanted by a carnivalesque impulse to wind down the window and toss the debris of consumer society into the hedgecomb of trees and shrubs edging the road. Here lies a graveyard of inert excess, an inventory of impulse purchases; eating and drinking on the hoof and a veritable time capsule of the non-biodegradable floatsam of consumer culture. Like true twitchers, we must record our spoils:

Diet Coke, Fosters, Tennant’s, McCoys, Irn Bru, Sprite, Muller, McDonalds, Pepsi, Corona, Red Rooster, Lucozade, KP, Dr Pepper, Costa, Coke, Yorkie, Milky Bar, Pampers, Cadbury’s Buttons, Starbucks, Walkers, Carling, Graham’s Dairies, Tesco, Diet Pepsi, Asda, Smoking Kills, Ginsters, Pizza Hut, Golden Wonder, Red Bull, Powerade, Wild Bean Cafe, Huggies, Greggs, Snickers…

Fired up on caffeine,

the sugar rush floods

the synapses,

foot to the floor,

screech, toss

and off.

We are also struck by how the edgelands are places where things are simply forgotten about. Advertising signs from a more benign economic environment offering ‘Industrial Units for Sale or Lease’ are falling down and are never replaced; road signs tilt at 45 degrees; posters on substations intimate long forgotten concerts and doors on the mysterious roadside bunkers have all disappeared.

We are now out in the true edgelands, hugging the ribbon of verge by the side of the road as every vehicle utterly tanks it past us. We are pebbledashed by huge swathes of road spray and the draught, from the huge artic lorries that pass, threatens to pull us foot-powered perambulators into the middle of road. However, the objects of our effort and attention can now be clearly seen on either side of the road. We can feel their energies drilling into us and can only marvel at the scale of their transforming presence on this stretch of the edgelands. As long as we can stay vigilant and remain on the ribbon verge, we can resist the siren call urging us into the killer road.

Over to the right, in the middle distance, is a 100 metre column, on top of which sits a rotating turbine with three, colossal, scythe -like blades. This somehow reminds us of the free gifts of plastic spinners that you used to get sellotaped to the front cover of children’s comics like The Beano and The Dandy. Thus we have a name for our monster – Spinner – a vital part of the engagement and neutralisation process. Spinner is of such a scale that it doesn’t look quite real. It’s as if it is projecting some perspective morphing force field which shrinks or obliterates the elements within the landscape which offer any indication of human scale.

Spinner belongs to FMC Technologies, a Houston, Texas headquartered business, which manufactures subsea systems for the oil and gas and renewables industry. The 1.5MW turbine is projected to supply up to 40% of their energy needs at their Dunfermline facility and was financed by Triodos, the ethical bank. We stand and watch the strange poetry of the rotating blades dancing with the wind, quite hypnotic and completely silent from our vantage point. There is some some sense of good energy radiating from this structure and there is a fluidity and engagement with the elements. Spinner could probably only be a product of the edgelands. A place where a turbine of this size can be erected then lost and forgotten, despite it’s landscape transforming qualities.

If Spinner has a slightly ethereal, alchemical quality, transforming wind into electricity, over to our left is a structure that looks as if it is marauding up towards the ridge, like a mechanised robotic toy about to attack. This is the aptly named Goliath crane recently transported from China’s Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co Ltd, where it was manufactured. Goliath is the largest crane installed in the UK and across its 120m beam is the clearly visible signage:

aircraft carrier alliance

Goliath sits in Rosyth Dockyard which lies over the hill down on the Forth. In effect, we are only seeing the top of the crane which at 90m high almost rivals Spinner in height. Goliath is part of the most expensive project in British naval history with two aircraft carriers presently being constructed at £3 billion a pop. We have already been told that once constructed, one will be mothballed immediately and the other will have no planes to fly from it. Try explaining this logic to a five year old. The carriers are to be named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. The sheer folly, financial carnage and symbolism of this whole escapade is such that it almost fries our collective brain into meltdown. However, very soon we are all whistling and singing Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding – the Robert Wyatt version naturally – so we can hum the piano solo with our kazoos. This has the desired effect, tames the beast and calm descends. As we walk further along the road, we can gain a better vantage point to look down over the dockyard and see the true scale of Goliath. Our fear turns to pity as we realise that all we are looking at is simply a dumb, beast of burden, a heavy lifter, on which has been foisted the indignity of jingoistic colours, the White Ensign flag and the reek of failed empire. Also lurking down there, somewhere in the bowels are seven decommissioned nuclear submarines, still radioactive and we are reminded of some possibly apocryphal tales of technicians metal-capped boots glowing green in the dark. Isn’t it amazing what can be buried in the edgelands.

Back on the A985 and another juggernaut threatens to drag us into the road as we alight on Windylaw Path which leads down to the villages of Limekilns and Charlestown. We’ve had enough of the road but happy to have got the measure of Spinner and Goliath. Our dérive receptors are once again activated when we read that Windylaw Path is a coffin road.

Who could resist that and was Limekilns not mentioned in Stevenson’s Kidnapped?

As we head up the coffin road, a buzzard soars overhead…

Now playing: Brian Lavelle – Lambent

Levitate the Crags!

One of the most direct ways to immerse yourself in Fife’s liminal energies is to walk the Coastal Path. Out on the edge at the intersection of land and sea is always a receptive place to be. However, for the more expedient traveller, or slacker psychogeographer, the short train journey that hugs the coastline from Inverkeithing to Kirkcaldy can be a sensory delight as the train rattles through the villages of Aberdour, Burntisland and Kinghorn. Position yourself on the right hand side of the train and open up the synapses to the field of vision that floods the senses.

If I have a taste, it’s for scarcely more than earth and stones.
I eat air, rock, earth, iron.

Arthur Rimbaud [1].

CIMG1363 — Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags from Fife

Gazing out over the Firth of Forth to Arthur’s Seat and the dolerite and columnar basalt of the Salisbury Crags. Like some striated, cosmic sombrero, angled and poised ready for take-off over the needle teeth of Edinburgh’s gothic spires. The castle nesting atop its volcanic plug. In the foreground stands the stillborn Edinburgh Riviera a Ballardian monument to pre-credit crunch architectural and financial hubris.

Deep Time / City Time / Hubris Time

♦

There is a solidity of presence to the Salisbury Crags that radiates over the Forth. Layered custodian of the longue durée, deep time is encoded in these rocks. Thoughts turn to James Hutton (1726-1797) amateur geologist whose pioneering discoveries, on these very stones, challenged two prevailing ‘scientific’ shibboleths. Firstly, the notion of the Genesis creation myth which suggested that the earth was only a few thousand years old and secondly, the Neptunist theory that all rocks had precipitated from a single primordial ocean.

“the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.” [2]

I like the idea of Hutton’s work being rooted in direct observation of the rock layers that he could walk on, see, pick up, touch and feel. Open to the calling of the rocks and stones:

“The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,– no prospect of an end” [3].

By observing what is now known as the Hutton Section, Hutton arrived at a theory that the Salisbury Crags ‘sill’ was formed when a much younger layer of fluid, hot magma intruded into older layers of sedimentary rock and solidified. It is now known that this sill is at least 25 million years younger. Hutton’s theory of ‘deep time’ was presented in his revolutionary Theory of the Earth, (1785), which proposed that Planet Earth was the literal bedrock of all history, long predating the appearance of the human and would endure long after they had gone. The age of the Earth is now believed to be 4.54 billion years old.

♦

“Those of us who grew up in the sixties, when we put men on the Moon, now have to watch as every Republican candidate for this year’s presidential election denies the science behind climate change and evolution. That is a staggering state of affairs and it is very worrying,”

Professor Naomi Oreskes, University of California, San Diego. [4]

♦

The train rattles along the coast between Aberdour and Burntisland. Over the shimmering Forth:

The space of the Crags

floods the imagination

singing their presence

of encoded deep time

and time yet to come.

a need to start from the ground

on which we stand.

more magma needed

Levitate the Crags!

As the train approaches Kinghorn on a bright morning, the sun reflects off the rows of caravans , draped like rows of emerald jewels on the hill above Pettycur Bay. Look seaward and it’s possible to see basking seals sunning themselves on the rocks.

Perhaps today? Tide is out.

When taking this journey, I am always alert to the possibility of a sighting of the fish “which they could find no name for”.

Daniel Defoe’s visit to Fife is recounted in Letter XIII of his A Tour Through the Whole Islands of Great Britain, published in 1724. At Kinghorn he observes how the men ‘carry’d on an odd kind of trade, or sport, of shooting of porpoises of which very great numbers are seen almost constantly in the Firth’. Defoe explains how the porpoises are brought on shore and their fat boiled off for oil, which they also do with other fish such as ‘grampusses, finn fish, and several species of the small whale kind’. However, in one particular year, ‘there came several such fish on shore which they could find no name for’. Defoe records seeing eight or nine of these fish lying on the shore from ‘Kinghorn to the Easter Weems, some of which were twenty-foot long and upward’. [5]

It is intriguing to reflect that a well established sea trading community would be unable to name this mysterious fish? A surprise manifestation in a world already mapped, named and territorialized. Perhaps only nine of these creatures ever existed? Perhaps these were the last nine?

♦

The train pulls into Kinghorn,

there they lie on the shore:

cut, boiled and rendered for oil.

the last ones.

♦

Fifteen minutes from Kinghorn there are two petrochemical installations run by global energy giant ExxonMobil. Our train journey has meant we have seen neither. Sometimes the advantages of walking are abundantly clear. On foot the psychogeographic receptors are more finely attuned.

http://www.scottish-places.info/features/featurefirst19.html — ©2011 Gazetteer for Scotland

The Fife Ethylene Plant (“FEP”) at Mossmorran, near Cowdenbeath is one of the largest in Europe with an annual output of 830,000 tonnes. Initially, Brent – the largest oil and gas field in the North Sea UK sector – provided the gas feedstock, but with the decline of Brent production, gas from the Norwegian sector is now also used with 50% of feedstock coming from the Stratfjord and Goja-Vega fields. The natural gas is brought ashore at St Fergus, north of Peterhead and then travels to Mossmoran through a 222km underground pipeline. 12 million tonnes litres of water are pumped every day from Glendevon reservoir to generate steam used in the ethylene cracking process. Four miles away on the Firth of Forth, just west of Aberdour, lies the Braefoot Brae marine terminal where the ethylene is shipped to Antwerp and the rest of Europe.

All of these hidden entrails of energies radiate far and wide.

The Mossmorran flare is a well known local phenomenon, which can light up the sky like a surreal, Lynchian, ignited match diffusing its uncanny hue throughout night and day:

“I live at the top end of Lochgelly and the noise keeps me awake most of the night. It sounds like constant thunder or a plane overhead. The roar is ridiculous and the constant light also disturbs my sleep. Through the day I have to keep all the windows shut to cut down on the noise but even with the windows shut you can still hear the constant roar. The flaring and the noise gives me sore heads and I just feel constantly ill with it. It’s ridiculous that we have to put up with this type of noise pollution. If I made that type of noise or a normal industry made that type of a noise I would soon find myself in trouble with complaints against me. How come they are being allowed to get away with this, year in year out. So much for the quality of life for the residents of central Fife”

Margaret. Lochgelly Resident [6]

“FEP is proud of its environmental record in both waste management and emissions”. [7]

ExxonMobil, 2010

♦

Not really knowing where I’m going with all of this, I take a gander at the news headlines on Sunday morning 19^th February 2012. I learn two things:

It is reported for the first time today that The ExxonMobil oil company has been fined £2.8 million for failing to report 33,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from the Fife Ethylene Plant at Mossmorran. It is the largest ever fine for an environmental offence in British history.

ExxonMobil is an active funder of the Heartland Institute whose mission is to: “discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems”. Global warming and climate change is a particular bête noir of Heartland and they make vociferous attacks against the environmental movement and scientists who support the evidence based claims for global warming. Their website features a list of ‘experts’ and like-minded conservative policy think-tanks, many of whom have also received funding from ExxonMobil. [8]

♦

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrargerich/ — ©Iragerich

The burnt out train

lies mute

at Kinghorn station

the birds are silent.

just over there

on the shore:

cut, boiled and rendered for oil.

♦

Over the Forth

a faint pulse.

the Crags

are speaking.

more magma

needed

Levitate the Crags!

♦

The local is always global

References:

1. Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Festivals of Hunger’, from Last Poems.

2. John Playfair, (1805), “Hutton’s Unconformity” Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh V (III).

3. James Hutton, (1785), The Theory of the Earth, p. 304.

4. Professor Naomi Oreskes, quoted in ‘Attacks paid for by big business are driving science into a dark era’ The Observer, Sunday 19th February 2012.

5. Daniel Defoe, (1724), A Tour Through the Whole Islands of Great Britain, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1991 edition).

6. http://lochgelly.org.uk/2010/06/flaring-at-mossmorran/

7. Your Guide to the Fife Etylene Plant, (2010), brochure produced by ExxonMobil Ltd.

8. ‘Attacks paid for by big business are driving science into a dark era’ The Observer, Sunday 19th February 2012.

Now Playing: William Basinski – Disintegration Loops.

Happenstance – 1 (19.02.12 CE)

Scribbling away this morning and consulting Daniel Defoe’s A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain.

Walking in the afternoon near the beach at Kinghorn, and thinking about Defoe’s visit which he recounts in Letter XIII. Thoughts also turn to Alexander Selkirk who, not that far up the coast at Lower Largo, gazes out, projecting his own haunting presence into the psychogeographic mindscape. If Selkirk was the inspiration for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, it is the ghost of Robinson who wanders and stalks through many a tract of the psychogeographic imagination. Witness Rimbaud’s supposedly derived verb robinsonner (to travel mentally, or let the mind wander) or the unseen and unheard researcher in Patrick Keiller’s films London and Robinson in Space.

Later on, in the afternoon, cooking the tea. Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone on as usual. A haunting over the airwaves: The Robert Mellin Orchestra playing the soundtrack to The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The particular track: (A) Drift.

Now Playing: Erstlaub – I Am the Line Drawn in the Sand Between the Living and the Dead

Reclaim

I pass the old Lexmark factory in Rosyth on an almost daily basis. One of those US campus style buildings, nestling incongruously amongst manicured landscapes, with obligatory pond and water features.

This was supposedly the inspiration of ‘the factory’ in Gregory Burke’s Gagarin Way. Another example of Scotland’s inward investment bribery policy whereby multinationals steam in hoovering up every ‘grant’ going and as soon as the subsidies expire they’re off to the next one. 700 jobs lost. The fluidity of global, multi-national capital.

The factory closed in 2006 and although some maintenance has clearly been going on, ‘nature’ has stealthily been making her mark. Lichens and green algae creeping over the sleek post-modern surfaces; roof foliage sprouting healthily; the pond now completely covered by water plants. How long before it all crumbles to dust reclaimed by greenery?

EDIT: A new sign has gone up this week! Norwegian fish company Morpol is to buy the factory and use it to process Scottish smoked salmon. Good news for Rosyth but wonder where the fish will come from? What sort of energies will a fish factory radiate? We shall monitor and investigate!

Now Playing : Asva – Presences of Absences.

Cup and Ring on The Binn – Burntisland

In a previous post, I wrote of being haunted by the cup and ring symbol. In this wired, digital world, these cross-cultural, cross-geographic ciphers are all around us. Infiltrating our consciousness and yet remaining elusive and enigmatic. Tune in and they will reveal themselves in many unexpected places – from iPods to the X Factor, to packets of washing up powder.

How exciting to discover that some well-preserved marks exist on the north side of The Binn (Hill), the volcanic plug that overlooks Burntisland. It’s unlikely that you would stumble across them without having been tipped a nod as to where they are – they have protected themselves well for over 4000 years.

Lets just say that when you find them, the setting makes perfect sense. Vistas out over the Forth, high ground but sheltered. The heavens and stars open above. A place to capture energies of earth, wood, wind and sun; a place to inscribe these enigmas upon stone. Make a mark. An image of transmission; of energy radiating outwards, of ripples on the surface of consciousness being picked up by the tuned in antenna. Perhaps our ancient forebears were also receptive to this idea, way before the discovery of radio waves begat such an adaptable and iconic image.

It’s a pleasant walk to the stones. Up through a sheltered path, heady aromas of rain drenched wood bark, soft underfoot. Off to the left the sound of falling water. At the end of the path a steep scramble and over the stile. A pause for breath and across the butterfly strewn meadow, until you pick up the path that heads up to the summit of the Binn. A couple of ducks, glide aimlessly amongst the reeds in the pond on the left. Dragonflies hover like winged shards of stained glass and suddenly they are gone as if dissolved in sunlight. As you commence the climb up the Binn, the rocks are up on the right hand side. A scramble over some rough ground and fallen trees and once you are in the vicinity, you will feel the pull of the rocks and there they are.

There are two key marks. One is a fully complete cup and ring, perfectly preserved. Another smaller one has been started but remains unfinished. I wonder why? It’s a blast to close your eyes and think that around 4,000 years ago someone had taken the time – many many hours – to carve these marks into this rock. This rock here – now! We can still only guess why and perhaps it is better that way. Do we want to know that it may have only been for some dull utilitarian purpose? No! Here it remains today something quite beautiful and powerful, expressive human poetry. Materially tangible but elusive and meaning slips away, like grains of sand through the fingers, if we try to wring out its mystery in theories and guesswork.

Carrying on up to the summit of the Binn. There is a ‘top of the world’ sensation. Burntisland lies, directly below. Once home to Mary Somerville, pioneering mathematician and astronomer and the Reverend Thomas Chalmers, radical, social reformer and founder of the Free Church of Scotland. Once described by Patrick Geddes as ‘an anarchist economist beside whom Kropotkin and Reclus are mere amateurs’.

Glinters of sunlight on the Forth to East and West as the wind whips up a frenzy of pebbledash rain. We are forced to take cover in a small natural alcove on the hillside. Sheltering from the elements, thinking of pioneering radicals just as our stone carving friends would have done 4,000 years ago.

Now playing – Franca Sacchi: En

Carlingnose Point – NT135 809 O.S. Sheet 65

Part of the Fife Coastal Path between North Queensferry and Inverkeithing. Supposedly named by Norse sailors, given its physical resemblance to an old witch’s nose.

The carlin caught her by the rump, And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

For a small area, it has clearly always been a site of fortification and strategic importance given its extensive outlook over the Forth. Evidence of anti-aircraft defences still exist and the silent dolorite stacks show the extent of quarrying in the 1800s to help build the bases of the Forth Rail Bridge. The area is now a SSSI designated site and given its relatively small size supports a diverse range of habitat and plant life.

Field Gentian

Bloody Cranesbill

Lesser Meadow-Rue

Dropwort

Bell Heather

Harebell

Burnet Saxifrage

Hairy Rockcress

Fulmar

Grebe

Calcareous Grassland

Warbler

Finch

Hawthorn

Song Thrush

Bullfinch

Tern

Now Playing: Zappa – Make a Jazz Noise Here