CAMP 21
CULTYBRAGGAN
Intermedia OFF - SITE PROJECT
Introduction
P4
Comrie Development trust
P12
Walker & Bromwich
P16
Agnese cebere
P18
MARY HARTLEY
P20
HEALEY BLAIR
P22
FRANKIE BURR
P24
Naomi Baldwin Webb
P26
HELEN LEIGH
P28
FRAN HAWKER
P30
WILL CORNER
P32
AARON JOSE
P34
Allan Jardine
P36
GEMMA CROOK
P38
The Systematic Geopolitics of Cultybraggan
p42
upland - War and Peace in Camp 21
p50
The woods near cultbraggan
p60
MARVIN GAYE CHETWYND
p62
LUCAS GALLEY- GREENWOOD p64
ROBIN RICHARDSON
p66
CALLUM BRITTAIN
p68
SUSAN MOWATT
p70
HAZEL POWELL
p72
ELéNA POWELL
p74
JACK CHARLESWORTH
p78
JENNY SALMEAN
p80
MARYANNE ROYLE
p82
HARRY VAN DE BOsPOORT
p84
ELLEN SPENCE
p86
JESSE RIVERS
p88
Index
Introduction
Susan Mowatt and Zoe Walker
Artists and Intermedia lecturers at
Edinburgh College of Art
An important aspect of contemporary art
practice is the context in which a work is
made and presented. On the Intermedia
programme at Edinburgh College of Art,
students are asked to consider the context
in which they make work from the outset.
As part of this process we run external
research projects each year that allow
undergraduate students and lecturers to
engage with new places and people, and
to conduct site related research together
outwith the confines of the university
setting.
historic site whilst also looking to the
future for a place that finds itself at a
pivotal point of change. Thanks to the
Comrie Development Trust we were welcomed into the camp and given a free
rein and understanding of the complexity of the site. As visitors we were free to
come and go, acutely aware of the stark
contrast this freedom played out in relation to the lives of the majority who
originally occupied this site against their
free will.
Situated in the Southern Highlands of
Scotland next to the picturesque village
of Comrie, Camp 21 Cultybraggan offered
a plethora of possibilities. As a former
World War II Prisoner of War camp and ex
military training facility, here was a centre
of significant historical interest which is
now a community-owned asset currently
undergoing development and regeneration.
Our own occupation of the camp took the
form of a micro-residency over two semesters. Overnight visits to the Comrie
district allowed staff and students to
research, share ideas, make work and socialise together on a level playing field,
far from the familiarity of the studios. We
like to think that in a location originally
driven by rank and hierarchy, we as
artists/staff and students created a different kind of model for teaching and
learning: one where we are all set the
same challenges and asked to develop
work together, sharing responsibility for
It was not a light undertaking for a group
of artists to find ways of negotiating and
articulating the weight of this particular
6
collective tasks and exchanging ideas.
From a common starting point, an array
of different responses to Cultybraggan
resulted. The wide spectrum of past,
present and future iterations of this
unique place were expressed through
artworks that included performance,
sound, moving image, installation and
audience participation.
The final event was UPLAND, an exhibition and panel discussion that took place
on March 29, 2014. Hundreds of people
turned up on a cold, damp day to see the
work created by students and staff, and
to visit the new Heritage Centre that
opened on the same day. For students it
offered a valuable experience of making
work and of staging and publicising an
exhibition in the public realm. For us, it
was rewarding, inspiring and fun. It was
a joy to work alongside the Comrie Development Trust and this particular cohort
of creative young people.
Above: Intial visit to Culybraggan
Comrie Development Trust
David S McCall
Chair of the Comrie Development
Trust
Cultybraggan- perched between the
rugged hills of Perthshire, this prisoner
of war camp and Cold War fortress is one
of the country’s most unusual visitor/
tourist attraction.
Comrie and under the Right to Buy Act
the community purchased the Camp to
build a resilient community to meet the
challenges of the 21st century.
And for those of us whose mental image
of a World War II prison of war camp were
formed by Steve McQueen in the film The
Great Escape and Bob Crane in Hogan’s
Heroes, Cultybraggan camp looks exactly
the way it should look.
CDT was approached by Susan Mowatt to
provide the Camp as a location for a
number of Intermedia Art student installations. The students carried on site
surveys to identify appropriate venues for
their presentations including the Guardhouse, Nissen huts, the Chapel and other
camp facilities. The art works were to
reflect the unique historic context of Cultybraggan particularly articulating the
ways in which art works can explore and
engage with a significant historic site as
it undergoes change.
The camp was established as a prisoner
of war camp for Italian prisoners at the
beginning of the World War II, but later
housed conscripted German soldiers,
U-boat commanders and Waffen SS.
At the end of the war the camp was used
by regular army regiments, the TA and
various Cadets Corps as a training venue.
This remained the case until the facility
became surplus to Army/MOD requirements at the end of 2004.
In working with the students during this
project it became apparent that they were
highly motivated and enthusiastic about
developing their ideas and thoughts to
produce stimulating visual statements.
They were questioning, inquisitive, conThe Comrie Development Trust [CDT] was cerned, interested and generally highly
established in 2007 by the residents of motivated, which made working with
14
them a positive experience.
The final presentations were of a high
quality and it was clear from comments
made by both visitors and locals alike
that the project produced a successful
outcome. For CDT it was an opportunity
to consider the benefits of offering the
camp as a setting for creative input and
to support further creative projects.
This venture was the first of its kind for
CDT but we hope to work with the staff
and students of Edinburgh College of Art
in the future.
Above: View of Cultybraggan
Walker & Bromwich
Siege Weapons of Love - Pink Tank (ii)
Siege Weapons of Love - Pink Tank
(ii), is part of an alternative armory;
hybrid forms that merge weapons of
destruction with blooming plant life
to become air filled inflatable antiweapons that stand in resistance
to acts of violence and proclaim
an alternative world to the one we
currently occupy. In the context of
Camp 21 Cultybraggan, the Pink
Tank implants an alternative present
and hoped for future. It asserts the
symbolism of peace protests and asks
us to make this alternative version
of the world a reality, wherever we
can. The Siege Weapons of Love are a
series of anti-weapons within Walker
and Bromwich’s Friendly Frontier Love
Campaign. It is a campaign that has
proclaimed love and peace through
idiosyncratic, absurdist and celebratory
acts since 2001 and will continue
to do so until there is no more war,
oppression and violence.
18
Agnese Cebere
In the Absence
In the Absence was a sound-based
installation located in the cells of the
guard block.
It was the recording of an interaction
between the body and the confines of
the space (i.e. the walls and the floor),
using two high-quality sensitive
microphones to create a binaural
recording. The sound emanated from
two speakers at opposite ends of the
room evoking an abstracted movement
as the sound travelled between them.
A sensory exploration was transformed
into an aural investigation. Not
instantly recognisable and detached
from the action that produced the
sound, it lured the viewer in through
unknowing. Eventually the sounds and
the space were reunited through the
perception of the visitor - a mediated
communication between the bodies of
the artist and the visitor.
20
Mary Hartley
Game Centre 42
I create works that attempt to resolve
the dwindling amount of fun I have
in my day to day life. Searching
everywhere, from the deepest seas to
distant memories, for ways to entertain
myself and others.
For UPLAND, I proposed to work with
the visitors to the show and the wider
local community through the creation
of an anthology of childhood games.
The contributions could then be shared
and acted upon throughout the day
and afterwards to further audiences
through a series of Game Meetings.
22
Healey Blair
One Present to Another
One Present to Another was a series
of 16 photographs collected from
the residents of Comrie over the
course of history, overlaid with my
own photographs of Comrie taken in
the present. It was a work where my
perspective of the history of Comrie as
an outsider in the present, was forced
over the perspective of history of the
people who have lived in the village
their whole lives. It was a reflection on
how our perspective of history and past
can often be affected by our view in the
present, when we travel to a new place.
Past and present become inseparable,
particularly in a place where history is
so ingrained in its identity, as it is in
Comrie.
24
Frankie Burr
Solitary (Harry Burr)
Listed as missing, presumed dead,
before the Red Cross found and
repatriated him, Harry Burr (1906 –
1977), a British Intelligence Officer
captured in Crete during World War II,
was moved around POW camps and
hospitals in Greece, Austria, Germany
and Poland. When researching for the
‘Confessions Series’ in 2013/14, the
release of 8 pages of documentation
from the National Archives stated
that for much of his time as a POW,
Capt. Harry Burr was kept in solitary
confinement. The rest of his file
remains sealed.
The body of work made responded to
the discoveries found in those papers,
to the deprivation of isolation, to the
cold, to the dark and to the space
within the cell. The activity during this
period was recorded on film, through
hourly stills photography, via audio and
through writings - from the descriptive
to the confessional. Movement within
the confined space was mapped with
rough black wool. At the end of this
period of ‘solitary confinement’, the cell
was left as an installation for visitors to
explore during the final event.
Taking these papers and others
from his archive, it wasn’t until I put
myself in ‘solitary confinement’ in
the last remaining prison cell within
Cultybraggan POW Camp that I read
the official story of my grandfather’s
wartime and the private words that he
wrote and sometimes received, in his
cells. Isolated in ‘solitary confinement’
for only 72 hours, I spent my time
surrounded with the archive of writings,
photos and drawings to, from and about
Harry.
26
Naomi Baldwin Webb
Recital
Recital looks to explore the political
agency of the storyteller, identifying
the practice of revoicing as a potential
tool for dissent and agitation. The work
combined film and sound, collaging
fragments of documentary film footage
with audio recordings of World War
I prisoners of war as they recite a
passage from the Old Testament.
Recital interweaves multiple narratives,
contrasting the apparent realism of
the film footage with the element of
fantasy and myth that derives from its
audio content. The work evolved from
broader research into psycholinguistics,
speech and narrative.
28
Helen Leigh
Where are you now, then
We live in a demanding society. We
claim to never have the time. We
long to be somewhere else. We wait
for something to happen. We rarely
appreciate the Time, the Place or the
Now.
Where are you now, then encouraged the
audience to sit and listen, to embrace
the moment, reflecting on the time
that is passing, to think about our own
circumstances and situations.
The work consisted of a constructed
environment, set apart from other
works in the location, providing an
exclusive and ambient setting. It
generated conversation between
the interior and exterior, the live and
pre-recorded, questioning the act and
manner of listening. What is it to listen?
How we listen determines what we
hear.
Sound installation
Fran Hawker
Heard and Not Seen
The mini bus that drove the artists
to Perthshire for UPLAND was also
used for a performance piece in which
people could sit and read scripts aloud.
These scripts were transposed from
real conversations about Cultybraggan
Camp between local people. Some
conversations were informed and
knowledgeable, some were casual and
speculative, but all of them allowed the
re-enactors to extend their view of the
camp to include other people’s points
of view.
32
Will Corner
Structural Portrait
My work explores the authoritative
nature of photographic images, utilising
colour as a descriptive medium
to question their representational
capability.
Structural Portrait consisted of two
4mm glass sheets spray painted with
a high gloss enamel paint. The size
and shape of the glass was taken from
the dimensional properties of the
window it rested beneath, whilst its
colour was drawn from photographic
documentation of the huts painted
exterior.
34
Aaron Jose
Untitled
I approached people and asked them
whether they believe Cultybraggan
has a future. The participants/audience
submitted their answer by taking a
chocolate football from the scale/
seesaw-like construction, which raised
their desired answer higher up, towards
success.
If they wished to answer more
than a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, they were
encouraged to write down their ideas/
views on some brightly coloured sticky
notes and attach them to a pin board
situated behind the 3D sign. I saw
it as an opportunity for participants
to submit more thorough answers
and contribute ideas they may have
for Cultybraggan, further raising it’s
publically engaging purpose and
potentially having a lasting effect.
36
Allan Jardine
A Tribute
On first visiting Cultybraggan Camp, a
military training camp used up until the
1990s, it brought back memories of my
own days in the Territorial Army, where
I stayed in similar accommodation in
Dundee and Helensburgh. It occurred
to me that my father, who served in the
Black Watch as a TA officer for many
years, would almost certainly have
stayed in this Perthshire camp, the
Watch being the local regiment of the
area.
On entering the Officers Mess, I had
a vision of the men around the large
fireplace drinking, laughing and
chatting, among them a very young Dad,
the bar stewards in white jackets taking
orders for rounds to be signed for of
course. No money changes hands in the
Mess.
As a piper, I thought it appropriate to
resurrect some old ghosts by playing
some fitting tunes in and around the
Mess. The same tunes that would
have been played there well before
my father’s time, and well after. To
complete the performance I dressed
as a Black Watch piper, using the Royal
Stewart tartan kilt and my father’s own
Glengarry and leather sporran, as a
tribute to both him and all the other
soldiers, both Regular, Territorial and
Cadet, who passed through the gates
of this old place, the cobwebs and
peeling paint of the distinctive huts
momentarily restored to their former
glory, if only for a fleeting instant, as I
marched past.
Allan Jardine is a Technician at the
Edinburgh College of Art
and is also an ex Royal Scots
38
Gemma Crook
WANDERLUST
wan·der·lust
noun: a strong desire to travel
origin: German
WANDERLUST* was a participatory
performance which transported
members of the public from the
local town, Comrie, to the exhibition.
Participants were shuttled to the event
on bikes and were led by two devilmay-care assistants. Conceptually,
the artwork aimed to heal the bond
between the art world and the public
and deal with issues of elitism in the
art community.
40
The Systematic
Geopolitics of Cultybraggan
Professor Johnny Rodger addresses the
panel question:
To what extent can a public art work, act as
a tool to transform understanding of context,
and can art play a significant role in sites
undergoing a process of change?
Nestling in the Perthshire hills, on a
floodplain between a bend in the Water
of Ruchill and the backroad south from
Comrie, is the site of Cultybraggan. On
first encounter the immediate reaction is
one of surprise. A turn in the road and
the sylvan, bucolic highland landscape is
suddenly transformed into a spectacle
resembling something out of Dads’ Army.
There on the fields below you (the road
is elevated on the valleyside at this point)
are the neat curved red roofs of over
seventy Nissen huts, set out in regular
formation across the land. The inimitable
ambience of the mid-20th century British
military camp – a sort of homespun yet
fully mobilised khaki class system known
to us from hundreds of films, TV programmes and comics - manifests itself
before our eyes. It seems a wonder that
here in the quiet rural heart of Perthshire
more has not been made of this odd settlement. How is it that you have not heard
of it before? Is it the British Army’s best
kept secret? Or if not, whose secret is it?
Now that the camp has passed into the
hands of the Comrie Development Trust
through a community right to buy (in
2007), however, it’s easy to get a Cultybraggan lowdown. You pass through the
high security gates, and the check-point
is now staffed by local Community Trust
volunteers with leaflets, information and
guided tours of the camp. There may even
be some Re-enactment Society chaps
hanging around with unfeasibly jolly faces
which somehow sit uneasily with their
full Nazi regalia -but more of that later.
As with all the best-kept secrets, the
reality of Cultybraggan unfolds gradually and at length, while its political motivations and ramifications are forever
disappearing over misty horizons. The
44
guided tour puts you in touch with the
materiel. That gives you something to
hold on to.
******************
The Nissen Hut is a prefabricated structure with corrugated steel sheets bent
over an arched steel bar frame to produce
a two-thirds circle section, in a long
cylinder-like length on the ground, closed
with windows and doors at each end.
Invented by Major Nissen of the Royal
Engineers during World War I to deal with
wartime structural exigencies and lack
of building materials, the great boast was
that one hut could be built in four hours
by six men. Over the two World Wars hundreds of thousands of these huts were
put together both in the British homeland
and nearer the theatres of war. Besides
their use for human habitation, they also
functioned as stores, clubs, halls, offices
and workshops –but despite this adaptability, the report on their interior environmental conditions was never good –
cold, draughty and damp in the temperate
zones, and stifling hot in the warmer climates.
Around 100 of these huts were built at
Cultybraggan in 1941, and some seventy
still remain. More than thirty of them are
protected by Historic Scotland designation
as listed structures. The camp was built
to house 4000 German prisoners of war,
with one third of its accommodation built
specially to hold the most extreme and
committed Nazis from among prisoners
held across Britain. These latter included
SS and U-Boat officers, and many had
been involved in a 1944 plot to free POWs
across Britain to attack the country from
within. An idea of the moral atmosphere
in the ‘black’, or committed Nazi section
of the camp can be gained from an anecdote concerning the fate of one particular individual. A certain Wolfgang
Rostberg was a German officer who was
known to have no sympathy with the
Nazis, but had been sent to the camp
through a British administrative error. The
Nazis blamed Rostberg and his anti-Nazi
likes for the general downturn in the
German fortunes in the war by that date,
and for the specific failure of their breakout plan. A kangaroo court was held in
one of the Cultybraggan huts by the Nazi
officers. They then dragged Rostberg from
his bunk, beat him to near-death, and
then strung him up to die in a hut used
as a shower block. Five German officers
were in turn prosecuted by the British
State for this murder, and hanged in
London.
It’s the sort of tale that makes you wonder
why anyone would want to spend their
spare time dressing up in a German World
War II uniform, marching around this
camp. The general history of the Nazis
and their vile and twisted behaviour is
bad enough, but the re-enactment chaps
here in Perthshire must know the details
of this particular sordid crime, and of the
nihilistic, misanthropic jackbooted footsteps in which they actually walk. Yet they
seem - seen in an off-moment, laughing
and joshing with their fellow re-enacters
– to be enjoying themselves. Enjoying,
that is to say, rather like a bunch of redfaced overgrown ten year old boys who
re-enact a scene out of a Commando Book
they have just been reading in someone’s
bedroom.
***************
From 1949-2004 Cultybraggan was used
by both the regular British and the Territorial Army as a training camp. A rifle
range was built in the north-west corner,
and a large modern shed for use as offices
and a mess-house. The most interesting
development in those years, however,
was the installation of a monitoring post
for the Royal Observation Corps (ROC) in
1960. The ROC consisted mainly of parttime volunteers, who on duty wore an
RAF type uniform. Their task was to form
an observation network as part of the
country’s defence during the Cold War,
keeping a record of aircraft sightings,
nuclear fall-out readings, and so on. The
importance of the site was upgraded
however, when the decision was taken to
build a Regional Government Headquarters bunker on the north east corner of
the camp. In the event of all out nuclear
war, the Secretary of State, Government
officials in Scotland, BBC representatives,
the British Telecom command and other
vital figures in the country’s infrastructure
would have operated from here. Unfortunately the two story underground
bunker costing £3.6 M was not completed until 1990, by which time, for lack of
a coherent Soviet antagonist, it was
already obsolete. Since then the military
have been attempting to sell off the facility with no success. It turns out that a full
nuclear attack was not needed to push
this top-secret bunker to its limits. It was
discovered to have sprung leaks already,
and the sewage system could only ever
cater for an estimated three months occupation, before someone would have
had to exit to empty the tanks.
**********************
I visited Cultybraggan at the invitation of
Edinburgh College of Art in an initiative
they put together with the Comrie Development Trust. Staff and students from the
college had taken a residency in a number
of the huts to examine, in their own words,
‘to what extent a public art work can act
as a tool to transform understanding of
a site or context.’ I was invited to offer
criticism and appreciation, and to give a
talk in the cinema on site.
Not all the artworks on site engaged directly with the history of the camp out-
lined above, but there is room here to
discuss a few that did so in interesting
ways. In one otherwise empty hut, Hazel
Powell managed to recreate something
of the echt radical chic culture of 192030s Germany through a sound installation
which intermittently played echoing fragments of the cabaret song ‘Lili Marlene’
(despite the fact that song wasn’t actually recorded till the 60s). Zoe Walker and
Neil Bromwich had constructed –or is
‘stitched up’ the proper verb? – a pink
fabric pneumatic Panzer with a blown up
purple flower bursting out of its gun
barrel. A delightful satire, entitled Siege
Weapons of Love/Love Cannon, they
parked it outside one of the huts alongside the jeeps and troop carriers belonging to the re-enactment chaps. One of
those chaps, a cheery fellow in a black
Panzer Division uniform was asked if he
would pose beside the Love Cannon for
a photo. It just seemed right. Despite his
evident cheeriness however, the request
was ignored rather than declined – surely
we didn’t think his authentically historical
type of transvestism had anything in
common with the over-inflated canon of
dubious sexuality?!
Two artists in particular had direct connections with the World War history of
prison camps, and took the opportunity
to explore that heritage here. Jack Charlesworth’s work occupied the hut which
had been the camp chapel, and had a
partition wall half way along its length.
Charlesworth had filmed a night-time
visit he made by car to Cultybraggan. The
film was shot from the car as it swung
around the dark roads inside the camp
and caught the fronts of the huts in the
headlights. With their white rendered
ends, and two black windows and a black
door, the huts loomed suddenly out of
the dark like so many ghostly visages. An
audio track of Charlesworth singing
(badly) at the top of his voice made the
ghostly apparitions on the screen all the
more eerie. In the meanwhile, in the other
room, on a small monitor –the likes of
which we could imagine the ROC examining for radar evidence of alien aircraft –
there was a film of his grandmother. She
had a pile of official government-type
letters in front of her, and we see her
sifting through them and talking to
camera. The letters had been sent to her
mother from her father, who had spent
time as a POW while she was an infant
during World War II. Unfortunately we
can’t make out anything she says though,
because of the noise from Charlesworth’s
singing in the next room.
Frankie Burr literally occupied part of the
guard clock to examine a story of intimacy and anonymity that regarded her
grandfather’s period as a POW in Cyprus
in World War II. She recreated one of the
cells, with thin bedcovers and all, and was
inside there for two nights. In the guard-
house office we could watch a film of her
preparing the place. The cell was then
plastered with copies of her grandfather’s
letters and newspaper clippings and a
whole network of connections was
mapped out between these pieces and
across the space, with black string crisscrossing the cell. The space was transformed into a type of cats-cradle. Burr
claimed that she could only really complete the research and understanding of
her grandfather’s experience in context
by coming to this ‘cut off’ place – i.e. Cultybraggan – herself.
*****************
After spending the day touring the camp,
viewing the artworks, in conversation with
fellow visitors and meditating on the
significance of it all, I decided I would
give my talk on the topic of geopolitics.
It may seem an unlikely theme on which
to bring together one’s thoughts on, and
to, a bunch of exhibiting artists. Geopolitics is, after all, usually a most abstract theme, one that can be discussed
while viewing large scale maps, while
taking into account long sweeps of history,
and while assessing the depth and power
of ideologies on civilisations. But the
point is that in Cultybraggan, the Geopolitical is not abstract at all, it is palpable.
The very ground on which you walk there
is saturated with strategic presences
invoked by the two most powerful and
authoritarian ideologies which blighted
the globe in the 20th Century. The whole
surface of the camp, the roads, and the
structures; is specifically and inescapably
devised to contain and militate towards
the defeat of the Nazis in the 1940s.
Meanwhile, underneath the surface are
the tunnels and underground concrete
rooms built to counter, maintain control
against, and survive through, the threat
of Soviet world domination. Ironically the
contrast of the natural beauty of the surrounding Highland landscape, and the
Nissens’ DIY, muddling-through British
aesthetic of the structures in the camp,
with the rigorously organised ideological
power of those forces of history – the Cold
War and the Nazis – only serve to heighten their presence in this enclosure.
It was thus, when I heard Frankie Burr say
that she wanted to come here to be ‘cut
off’, that at first, I considered that she
couldn’t be further from the truth. How
could anyone consider this place, crisscrossed itself -like the threads in her cell
– with concrete ley-lines of the most
significant geopolitical events in 20th
century history, as ‘ cut off’? It could
indeed be argued that nowhere in the
British Isles are the two ideologies associated with the most significant, inhumane and brutal social, political and
cultural upheavals of that century so
strongly present and intimately connected on the same condensed and isolated patch of land.
On giving it further thought however, I
realised that Burr was right. For we can,
in fact, never be cut off from these ideological , geopolitical forces that shape our
times. Just so, Burr’s grandfather and
Charlesworth’s great-grandfather were
not cut off from these ideologies and their
networks even if they spent time in solitary confinement in their respective guard
blocks. Indeed these prisoners were
always in touch: as prisoners they were
an intricate part of the mechanics of the
process through which these forces
played themselves out. They were ‘cut off’
however, inasmuch as they were removed
and separated from their own personal
everyday lives at home.
The realisation that the geopolitical
forces are engaging us and moving
through us all the time –something like
Foucault’s notion of a blueprint for operation, ultimately controlled by nobody
– is one of the reasons why modern artists
have come to see that the great historical
events and movements need no monuments built with the false assurance of
continuity that ‘marble’ or ‘gilded stone’
promises. The dilemma the Germans have
had since 1945 on how to mark or commemorate the events of World War II is a
case in point. How could they commemorate these events without engaging in
the traditional (ie pre-war) creation of
monuments which are, as James E Young
puts it, a ‘self aggrandising locus for na-
tional memory’ which celebrate righteous
and often martyrological triumphalism?
A couple of examples of ‘Counter Monuments’ should illustrate how German
artists confronted this dilemma. A 12
metre high gothic fountain paid for by a
Jewish businessman was built in the
square in the city of Kassel at the turn of
the twentieth century. The Nazis demolished the fountain in 1939, and in the
1980s there was a plan to rebuild by way
of commemoration. The sculptor Hoheisel
created a new monument which was a
mirror image of the old fountain –a
gaping 12 metre hole in the ground in
the same inverted gothic form, glassed
over at surface level. Thus it is the absence
of the monument, rather than its presence
that is preserved. Another monument
created in the 1980s by the husband and
wife team Gerz, in the town of Harburg,
was specified to be counter Fascist. Their
completed design took the form of a
square plan column, 12 metre tall with a
soft lead surface. An attached stylus
allowed local people of all opinions to
express themselves by writing their feelings across this surface, and the monument was built so that it gradually sunk
into a casing buried in the ground, and
disappeared completely after 15 months,
leaving only the top visible and a gravestone to German Fascism. Young points
out that by disappearing the actual monument these artists hoped that the
memory would pass onto the efforts and
consciousness of individuals who witness
it rather than residing in stones and rocks,
and other material.
Just as the German artists avoid monumentalising an historical force which is,
in any case, omnipresent, so the artists
like Frankie Burr and Jack Charlesworth
-unlike the re-enacters at Cultybraggan
– engage with the fragile legacy of the
intimate and everyday. It is that legacy
which has, as Burr puts it, been ‘cut off’
from us. How can that everyday humanity speak to us in the face of the overpowering omnipresence of geopolitical forces
which negate its importance, its actuality, its very possibility. The fragility of it
is recognised as we watch Charlesworth’s
grandmother struggle to make coherent
her memories of the war while her grandson chants inanely from next door. What
is she saying, and why won’t Charlesworth
let us hear how she and her family coped
while their father was in the clutch of the
Nazi terror? We keep coming back to these
flimsy huts then, to listen, to meditate
on the lives, cut off, imprisoned in an
ideological safe house. In the grounds of
the camp the geopolitical forces are palpable: in the artists’ work nothing is so
certain as Nazism, but the existential
fragility of the human condition thrills
through every elusive fragment. As James
E Young says, ‘maybe the surest engagement with memory lies in its permanent
irresolution.’
UPLAND – War and Peace in Camp 21
Neil Cooper introduces the panel discussion
as part of UPLAND at Camp 21.
Cooper is a writer and critic on theatre,
music and art.
1
Last year, I broke the rule of a lifetime,
and slept under canvas at an open-air
music festival.
Autechre, Thurston Moore, Portishead
and Godspeed You Black Emperor, the
latter of whom had first appeared at the
Bowlie Weekender back in 1999.
Previously, I’ve always vowed that unless
there’s a roof over my head and hot and
cold running water, I wasn’t interested.
Being somewhat older than many of the
attendees, myself and my friends made
the effort to see pretty much everything
on offer, only falling prey to the allure of
late night bars once the bands had finished.
As a result, prior to last year, the only
music festivals I’d been to were All Tomorrow’s Parties, the left-field festivals
curated by a particular artist, who selected all of the supporting acts in a
series of weekend events.
For some of the younger people in attendance at ATP, however, it didn’t seem
to matter whether they saw many – or
indeed any – of the bands or not.
These took place originally in Pontin’s
holiday camp in Camber Sands in East
Sussex, and latterly at Butlin’s bigger and
slightly less basic holiday camp in Minehead in Somerset.
It was being there that counted.
At ATP, as it came to be known after the
first event, which the curators Belle and
Sebastian called the Bowlie Weekender,
I was lucky enough to attend events
curated by Mogwai, Shellac, Tortoise,
This is probably much the same as how
it was at Woodstock and the Isle of Wight
as much as it is at Knebworth, Glastonbury or any of the other open-air events
that have become a summer fixture as
52
the ongoing festivalisation of culture has
become ever more mainstream.
It was the same for me last year at Wickerman.
Unlike ATP, however, where many happy
campers were having their first holiday
away from their parents as a kind of mini
gap year rite of passage, much of the
Wickerman audience was made up of
middle-aged weekend ravers who could
take their kids along so they could try
and recapture a similar state of being
and remember the first time.
The summer music festival, it seems, like
week-long raves in Ibiza, or the school
camping trip before it, is the done thing
these days for kids of all ages.
In the art world, students and seasoned
artists alike ‘do’ Venice just as they might
have once ‘done’ and maybe still ‘do’ a
Club 18-30 holiday with their mates.
There’s something about getting away
from your regular environment, be it for
work, pleasure or both, that sharpens the
senses, raises the antennae and brings
you out of yourself a bit.
There’s a Peanuts cartoon with Peppermint Patty and Marcie skipping merrily
through the grass with the slogan above
them saying ‘HAPPINESS IS CLASS
OUTSIDE’.
Such a notion isn’t that different from
the 1960s hippie generation’s idea of
‘Getting Their Heads Together In The
Country’, or Jesus going out into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights.
And it was exactly the same for me at
Wickerman and All Tomorrow’s Parties at
Pontin’s and Butlin’s as much as it was at
youth club weekends in North Wales or
at Iona Youth Camp or a summer performance course in Fife.
And I would wager it’s pretty much the
same for the artists who’ve made work
here for UPLAND at Cultybraggan.
A community of some kind is created.
Things happen.
Things change.
And then you go home.
But, as shocking as it is to have to wake
up to the real world again after what has
usually been a very insular experience,
you come back different in some way.
This is the essence of summer camp, to
transcend yourself in some way, to
become something other.
But if the experience at Cultybraggan,
Wickerman or wherever has changed you,
how has the summer camp you left behind
now it’s getting a new influx of visitors
without you been changed by you?
What have you left behind?
2
Places, like people, aren’t fixed, permanent things.
They’re always changing, and can be many
things at one and the same time.
So it is with the site of Cultybraggan,
which had a history before it became
Camp 21, but which has since been
defined by its experience as a Prisoner of
War camp.
In many ways, UPLAND is an attempt to
redefine Cultybraggan in the way that the
local, community-run Comrie Development Trust has done over the last few
years, and it’s a badge of honour to the
people running the Comrie Development
Trust that they’re forward thinking enough
to recognise the potential for art to
change a landscape in the way that its
done today.
But, as the booklet produced by Comrie
Development Trust outlining Camp 21’s
history makes clear, UPLAND isn’t the first
art to be housed here.
The booklet highlights the experience of
German musician Howard Tell, who fled
Nazi Germany, and ended up helping to
build Cultybraggan.
Tell would give piano recitals, and the
booklet features a poster for one.
The booklet also has an image of a programme for an evening of operatic excerpts performed by German prisoners.
There’s something of these incidents that
made me think of Playing For Time, the
1980 Arthur Miller scripted film which
starred Vanessa Redgrave as Fania
Fenelon, a real life Jewish singer and
pianist who, confined in Auschwitz,
becomes part of the camp’s Women’s Or-
chestra.
thing pinker and infinitely more peaceful.
Not that Auschwitz and Cultybraggan can
be compared in any way.
In its sense of choreographed spectacle,
Dancing Borders seemed to have its roots
in a 1960s counter-culture, and some of
the grass-roots and community-based art
that came out of that.
It just made me think again of the power
of art to transcend the surroundings that
it’s sired in and become something else,
a weapon of happiness if you will.
3
Weapons of Happiness was a phrase that
came to mind the first time I came into
contact with the work of Zoe Walker and
Neil Bromwich.
It was a phrase I nicked from the title of
Howard Brenton’s 1976 play about a
strike in a London crisp factory, and which
also featured characters that included
Joseph Stalin and the Czech cabinet minister, Josef Frank, who in the play has
hallucinations of life in Stalinist Czechoslovakia.
For some reason that plot seems more
relevant in this context than it did then,
even though it has nothing to do with
Zoe and Neil’s work.
Zoe and Neil’s film, Dancing Borders,
which was based on a performance of
theirs I first saw in Berwick, drew on some
of the battles that had taken place there,
and translated them into a piece of impressionistic contemporary dance that
transcended its source to become some-
This included Albert Hunt’s Bradford
Theatre Group, formed at Bradford College
of Art and immortalised in Hunt’s tellingly titled memoir, Hopes For Great
Happenings.
Then there was Jeff Nuttall’s adventures
in performance art with The People Show,
and there was John Fox’s Welfare State
International company.
There was also Centre 42, an arts lab
founded in North London in 1964 by playwright Arnold Wesker.
Centre 42 later morphed into the Roundhouse, the counter-cultural Mecca that
played host to hippie Happenings, including the launch of underground newspaper,
International Times, featuring performances by Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, as
well as the Middle Earth club.
With this in mind, it’s interesting to note
that, as part of UPLAND, one of the artists
huts has been dubbed Games Centre 42.
All of these initiatives in different ways
created spectacles in places and spaces
both indoors and outdoors that became
subverted, disrupted or changed in some
way.
A much sung example of this happened
in 1970, when Joseph Beuys and Richard
Demarco set out on their walk across
Rannoch Moor, not long before Beuys’
response to the walk – Celtic (Kinloch
Rannoch) The Scottish Symphony - was
seen in the Strategy Get Arts exhibition
at Edinburgh College of Art.
In the 1980s, the band Test Department
took the social and physical environment
of industrial decay and transformed it into
a thrilling martial spectacle set up in
abandoned factories and warehouses that
would later house a fledgling rave and
free party movement.
Using pounding percussion, found metal
objects and heroic iconography, Test Department looked militaristic, but remained fiercely oppositional in intent.
Later, Test Department’s Angus Farquhar,
who would go on to produce environmental spectaculars with his company,
NVA, would make the cranes on the River
Clyde dance and reimagine the landscape
of Glen Lyon.
indeed.
4
This year marks the 100th anniversary of
World War I, the 800th anniversary of the
Battle of Bannockburn and the thirtieth
anniversary of the Miners Strike.
The response by artists to World War I as
it happened helped spew up the Dada
movement, a noisy, destructive form of
anti-art that exploded into the moment
before morphing into Surrealism.
And now?
Every time I walk past Harburn Hobbies,
the model railway and Airfix kit shop on
Leith Walk in Edinburgh just now, I’m
struck by their latest window display.
With Test Department, he would reconstitute the Beltane Fire on Calton Hill, an
event which became synonymous with
protests against the Criminal Justice Bill,
the legislation brought in to outlaw gatherings involving repetitive beats.
This consists of an artfully arranged
display of boxes, each of which contains
a regiment of model soldiers – World War
I British Infantry, World War I British
Cavalry, World War I American Infantry,
World War I German Infantry – with the
box featuring a painting of an action
scene involving the relevant troops contained inside.
All of these, in different ways, were
weapons of happiness, just as Dancing
Borders was, and just as some of the works
on show in UPLAND here today at Cultybraggan might be too.
Behind these boxes stands a much larger
box, again with an action scene painted
on involving a cumbersome-looking tank
– a model of which can also be bought
separately.
But Dancing Borders was also a kind of
re-enactment of battles won or lost,
which, by way of assorted anniversaries,
seems this year to be very pertinent
As its lettering indicates, inside the larger
box is a kit that allows the serious modeller to build everything required to stage
their version of the Battle of the Somme
on a scaled-down diorama, presumably
with the boxes of model soldiers in front
also involved in the toy-town massacre.
This re-enactment in miniature contained
in the window display in Harburn Hobbies
made me think briefly of Hell, the sculpture by Jake and Dinos Chapman – who,
incidentally, in 2004 curated the Nightmare Before Christmas December strand
of the All Tomorrows Parties music festival at Camber Sands - which artfully arranged miniature model Nazi soldiers in
the shape of a Swastika.
Neither Hell nor Harburn Hobbies window
display, it seems, can be said to be
weapons of happiness.
5
As part of this year’s much vaunted Homecoming celebrations in June, the Battle
of Bannockburn – which in real life lasted
some 48 hours – will be re-enacted in a
series of three performances a day to
entertain the tourists in an event called
Bannockburn Live, described on its
website as ‘A Feast of Food, Music and
History’.
In the re-enactments, more than 300
participants from re-enactment societies
across Europe, and described as ‘living
historians’, will be choreographed by
Clanranald, the company who choreographed the action scenes in the films,
Gladiator and Thor 2.
Meanwhile, over on the music stages,
Dougie MacLean, the writer of the song
Caledonia, and Julie Fowlis, who sang on
the soundtrack to the Disney Pixar animated feature film, Brave, will perform
their own weapons of happiness.
6
As for the Miner’s Strike, Jeremy Deller
already immortalised this late twentieth
century civil war when he and some of
the conflict’s survivors – miners and policemen both – staged a re-enactment of
the Battle of Orgreave.
One of the Miners Strike’s bitterest conflicts, the Battle of Orgreave, saw some
5-6000 picketing miners at loggerheads
with up to 8000 police in Yorkshire in
1984.
It was an event which eventually saw
South Yorkshire police pay out half a
million pounds in compensation to striking miners they had arrested.
Film-maker Mike Figgis - who had once
been part of The People Show with Jeff
Nuttall - filmed Deller’s re-enactment of
the Battle of Orgreave for a Channel 4
documentary.
As well as using local people in the
project, Deller drafted in three re-enactment societies to choreograph something
that was still fresh in people’s minds, and
went some way to highlighting the battles
significance as well as being a form of
healing for the local community. 7
Deller’s use of weapons of happiness was
partly in keeping with Culloden, the 1964
film made by Peter Watkins, who used
documentary techniques to dramatise the
1746 Battle of Culloden that resulted in
the British Army’s destruction of the Jacobite rising.
Using a non-professional cast, Watkins
staged Culloden as a piece of contemporary reportage, with key players on both
sides of the battle being interviewed on
camera as if being shown on a news
broadcast.
To the best of my knowledge, neither Bannockburn, Culloden or Orgreave are available in Airfix model kit miniature reconstructions, although the Battle of the
Somme and other key battles in World
Wars I and II are.
Perhaps these too are a form of creative
play that reimagine environments in the
way that Zoe and Neil’s weapons of happiness do, and which the artists contributing to UPLAND today have done.
8
But what happens next?
Is it all about personal change within this
environment, or will it amount to something greater than that?
That remains to be seen, but as an
example of how environments can be
changed in the long term, one should
perhaps look to Rannoch Moor.
Since Joseph Beuys and Richard Demarco
first went there in 1970, the place has
become notable for other interventions.
Long before Brave, Disney situated Castle
McDuck, the ancestral home of Walt Disney’s cartoon millionaire, Scrooge
McDuck, on Rannoch Moor.
Rannoch Moor was also the location for
a scene in Danny Boyle’s 1996 big-screen
adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel, Trainspotting.
It is the spire built there by George Wylie
in 1986 in honour of Beuys and Demarco,
however, that is probably a more lasting
legacy of their visit.
9
Even more pertinent, this weekend, Test
Department have reconvened for the first
time since 1997 to present a new sonic,
cinematic and lighting intervention at
Dunston Staiths on the banks of the River
Tyne.
Dunston Staiths was built in 1893, and
was reputed to be Europe’s largest
wooden structure to ship coal from the
local Durham coalfields to the world.
The event will form part of the AV Festival of sound-based art in what should
prove to be one of the most spectacular
commemorations of the Miners Strike.
What happens next at Camp 21, Cultybraggan beyond UPLAND remains to be
seen.
Perhaps there will be more art.
Perhaps there will be some kind of music
festival.
Whatever happens, a brief conversation I
had earlier with a lady who was navigating the site as she perused the art in
UPLAND saw her capture what the power
of a space, and the power for that space
to change, can mean.
She put it succinctly.
“In a way,” she said, “we should be grateful to the army.”
A Trip
to the Woods
local Ranger, who spoke of the trees, their
origins, the animals that frequented the
woods, and various parties vying for ownership. In the spring we returned, walking
the Millennium Road to the Melville
Monument which teeters ominously over
the town of Comrie and the distant camp.
For me this was a beacon, a point of reference when looking out of the camp with
wanderlust. It could be reached by following a woodland path, which got progressively steeper as our walk went on,
twisting and bending in and out of fallen,
moss ridden branches. Upon reaching the
end of the path, the top of the hill, we
were met by the towering monument. But
of even more interest was the vista that
opened up atop the cliffy edge, revealing
the sprawling hills and fields that surrounded the camp and Comrie. In taking
the action of leaving Comrie, entering the
woods, and then being subjected to the
reveal, the stretching lie of the land, as a
group we were put through a portal. The
woods ascertain this magic, the ability to
shrink space to close quarters, only to
open up again and remind you of the
vastness of your surroundings.
A guided tour of Comrie Woods with
Greenspace Ranger Richard Armstrong
Jesse Rivers
I’ve been asked to write something about
the trees, about the woods, the woods
that surround the ex World War II POW
camp that was to be the muse of 25 artists
for the months October to March. The
woods were my escape. Doubtless, they
were probably a torturing prospect for
those incarcerated within Camp 21. A
symbol of freedom, so tantalizingly close
but so very very far away. This relationship
between place presents a dual, contrasting set of ideals, those associated with
unlimited, bountiful space, and those of
the prison, the cage, the lock away. Although no longer a functioning prisoner
of war camp, this relationship was unnervingly present as I attempted to
respond artistically to the site, with my
thoughts unable to put at bay the urge
to visit the woods, climb the hills, to
leave the camp.
I cannot speak for all that experienced
the woods. I can only go on what I saw
and felt as we walked. But when faced
with the weight of Camp 21s context, its
history, the woods acted as a break-away.
A moment of contemplation and time to
begin to place oneself within this context,
a place in Camp 21’s periphery, where
greenness was all, and the only evidence
of what was to come was reduced to a
small cluster of huts in the distance.
We experienced the woods as a group on
both our first and second research visits
to the camp. In the autumn it was with a
62
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd
49th Parallel
at Cultybragan
I chose to screen the Powell and
Pressburger film 49th Parallel at
Cultybragan because it is a World War
II propaganda film. The cast, Raymond
Massey, Laurence Olivier and Leslie
Howard, all worked at half their
normal fee because they believed the
film had a valid contribution to the
war effort. It’s interesting to see how
‘artists’ contribute to the war effort. I
felt instinctively the film is relevant
to the context of a contemporary art
exhibition in a former prisoner of war
camp. At one point within the film the
protagonists burn a Picasso painting
on a camp fire! It is an odd plot, an
odd story, it is thought provoking and
intriguing.
Still from the film ‘49th Parallel”
64
Lucas Galley-Greenwood
Alive
In this work I explored my interests
in space, light and architecture using
the striking and infamous sites of the
Nissen Huts of Cultybraggan Camp.
I flooded a hut with car headlights,
shining light in through the small
windows of the hut. I used the car
lights to highlight the emptiness of the
huts and their size. The photo is taken
from the opposite end of the hut and
therefore expresses how especially at
night the huts can feel almost haunted
in their appearance. Originally I
practised only using the front windows
of the hut as an entrance for light to
flow in to, however, I believed that
using a combination of the front and
side windows of the hut allowed for
more surfaces and features of the huts
to be exaggerated in an interesting way,
such as the corrugated metal walls of
the spaces.
66
Robin Richardson
Guard Hut
Hut 32
I was fascinated by the original camp
design, specifically the divide between
prisoners and guards and how this
might relate to a more contemporary
imagining of a prison. In my practice
I have been exploring surveillance
art. In modern prisons, prisoners are
not allowed to be filmed where they
live as it is considered a breach of
human rights. The guards however, are
monitored 24/7. I therefore related this
to the design of the camp by installing
a contemporary CCTV set-up in a guard
hut, while leaving an identical prisoner
hut empty.
When the viewer experienced the
monitor in ‘Guard Hut’ they assumed
that it was a recording. Whilst exploring
the camp they stumbled across the
rear entrance to the hut and saw the
live feed camera in the adjacent room.
This created a simultaneous past and
current interaction.
‘live feed’ installation
Calum Brittain
S is for Sausage
My interest lies in the absurd,
performance and disassociation.
I set up a hotdog stand inside the
Guardhouse onsite. More intrigued by
the future of the camp and sympathetic
with the intentions of the Heritage
Trust, I wanted to explore potential
developments for the space, departing
from the dense history of the site.
70
Susan Mowatt
Killing Time
(Weaving = Time = Healing)
In 1996 I was invited to have lunch with
the Queen at Redford Barracks to celebrate the Presentation of New Colours to
the 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders.
could be back in their homeland with the
people they loved.
Across the River Ruchill at Earthquake
House, an instrument is capable of measuring seismic activity as far away as China.
Meanwhile, it quietly records time in
minutes and hours by drawing a continuous blue ink line on paper: the same blue
that is often used in United Nations medal
ribbon, awarded for peacekeeping missions.
Three things stand out about that day:
1. A woman (the Queen) knocked a bowl
of vichyssoise with her handbag as she
sat down to eat, which spilled down her
front.
2. The lavish expenditure of the event,
particularly in the Officers’ Mess.
3. The stark separation of the officers from
the ‘jocks’.
Two events occurred whilst I was making
this work:
1. Russia annexed Crimea
2. Pete Seeger died
In the National War Museum a box similar
in size to one used for dominos or pick up
sticks, contains beautifully crafted wooden
rods that were used by an officer in the
18th century to work out military manoeuvres for his men.
There are the few who make the decisions
and the thousands upon thousands of
others who are required to carry them
out. At Cultybraggan, despite the stories
of subterfuge, I thought of the many who
longed for the days to pass until they
His song, Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything
There is a Season) takes its lyrics directly
from the Book of Ecclesiastes apart from
the last line,
“A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.”
72
Hazel Powell
Common
During this residency it was clear that
my interest lay primarily in using the
history of the space, working inside
a POW camp it was impossible to
separate the past; and the landscape.
My aim was to create a work that
reflected the harmonious relationships
formed between the prisoners and
the local people in the village of
Comrie during World War II, keen to
focus on the congenial as opposed to
the sombre themes of war. The work
was composed of a traditional war
song, sung in three of the languages
that were spoken by prisoners and
guards; German, Italian and English. In
uniting the voices I hoped to speak of
camaraderie and commonality amongst
people.
74
Eléna Powell
An Alternative Walking Tour of
Culybraggan
An Alternative Walking Tour of
Cultybraggan, an interactive scavenger
hunt and large-scale drawing, was
primarily a response to the encoding
and encryption of information during
wartime. Colour coded squares were
placed around the camp – marking
particularly enigmatic or interesting
places – and visitors asked to complete
a form, noting the order in which they
spotted the squares. The forms were
translated into patterns, encoding
where each person had walked
and been (although it’s only really
decipherable if you have my notes).
The pattern was encoded again through
further drawings, prints and encryption
techniques.
76
Jack Charlesworth
Tomorrow Belongs to Me
Untitled (Sorting through old letters with my Nan)
Cultybraggan is infused with history,
enriched with local tales and resonates
memories that prompt emotional
responses from all who visit. My own
family history has ties to experiences
within a Prisoner of War camp, and
through my exploration of this
harrowing experience, I proposed to use
the original Chapel to propel my own
spirit that I found whilst walking the
breadth of this barren space.
Having worked frequently within
derelict spaces and having built a
working relationship within abandoned
forms outside of the contingencies of
a traditional art space, I was keen to
interact and engage an audience in
more immersive-
style theatre. The
spotlight beamed on the derelict
settings, breathing new life into an
lapsed memory.
Top: The performance
‘Cultybraggan Camp Compere’
Below: Still from Untitled
Previous: Audience viewing
80
Jenny Salmean
series of works
In my eyes there was a kind of
desperation in the talk of the new
heritage centre. The mission to return
objects, photographs and writing to
the camp seemed to be based on a
last resort to make Cultybraggan seem
more genuine, more deserving of its
preservation, while distracting from
how it exists today.
human element to the Nissan hut,
and perhaps acted as just as much
of a reminder of the everyday at
Cultybraggan as the historical artifacts
themselves.
I think this is mainly where these works
came from. The agenda of the heritage
centre playing in my head resulted
in a sort of alternative, a museum
without the lottery grant or even actual
artifacts.
Large feather-stuffed fabric forms
mimicked the display of objects in a
museum, taking the wires, plinths, poles
and panels which display the objects
as a starting point. The deliberate
camouflage and functional invisibility
of these display methods makes them
even more interesting to me, and I find
them quite beautiful formally.
Using fabric, flour, soap and clothes
labels to make the forms brought a
82
Maryanne Royle
Pull
Tug of war is a game well known by
most from childhood. This work was an
exploration into what people assume
about a situation and what they fail to
consider.
On one side of the curtain the
participant could see a rope. I was on
the other side, attached to the rope by a
leather belt with a metal harness.
Audience participation was what
drove this piece: teamwork to find the
common goal of getting their opponent
through the curtain. As they had no
knowledge of who or what was behind
the curtain, curiosity was key.
84
Harry Van de Bospoort
Splintered Juncture
When visiting Cultybraggan camp I
was interested in the cracking, flaking
paint, particularly in the prison block.
The crusty layers of paint displayed the
layers of history at the site in a physical,
visceral way, capturing moments
in time and the entropic processes
that have made their marks over the
decades. It was clear to see three
distinct colours; terracotta covered
by green, which was in turn, covered
by a dirty white surface paint. I heard
that there were plans to change this
space into an ‘exhibition space’, which
would likely mean plastering over and
re-painting these walls, in which case
these beautiful flaking layers and their
temporal symbolism would be lost.
Using 32 bricks, mortar, PVA glue and
acrylic paint I made a replica section of
wall to be displayed within the prison
blocks. This commemorated the history
of this space, capturing the space now
in its state of liminality before its
planned changes into an exhibition
space.
86
Ellen Spence
The Visit
My work for Cultybraggan was
in response to the historic and
contemporary inaccessibilities of a
site designed to imprison men from
overseas. At the furthest end of the
last hut on the row, you might find an
alien form, relocated and displaced,
smooth but on examination found to be
unnatural; recycled and handmade.
88
Jesse Rivers
Into the Woods
The instantaneous and unescapable
feeling of a need to escape; to be
outside, away from the huts, away
from the gates and the enclosure
so weighted in history. This was
my inspiration for the video work
that followed a journey of looking. I
considered what it is to look, to feel
a longing for a place that cannot be
reached, as those that were POWs at
Camp 21 may have felt when looking
out upon their sublime mountainous
surroundings. This was a subject
beyond the wrongdoings of those
individuals, considering the rawness
of human feeling, the natural urge
for freedoms that are so heavily
intertwined with landscape and open
space.
Still from video
90
Thanks
Editors: Susan Mowatt & Zoe Walker
Design: Emma Finn
Primary Photographer: Mark Pinder
Initial production: Jack Charlesworth​
supported by the University of Edinburgh Knowledge Exchange Grant
David mccall
Will Reid
Neil Bromwich
Helen McCrorie
Chris Palmer
Claire Mullen
Bob Turner
Elaine Davidson
Richard Armstrong
National Museums Scotland
Comrie Fortnight Committee
Stuart Bennett
Dean Hughes
Annabelle Evans
Comrie Croft
Dickie webb
Stephen Hunter
Brian Ward
​