Polo Grounds

Abo Elementary School and Fallout Shelter

Armoured Crab

German Mobile Steel Pillbox
See the Lone Sentry site for information.

Tora Bora

Philip K. Dick

In Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth (1964), the outbreak of World War III prompts governments to bunker entire populations in huge underground shelters known as ‘ant tanks.’ As the war rages overhead, the subterranean masses are put to work manufacturing the robots that have replaced human combatants in the toxic conflict. Years pass, and the bunkered survivors watch on television as cities are incinerated and the president delivers morale-boosting messages that stress the need for increased productivity to meet the needs of the war effort. When a tank man burrows to the surface, however, he discovers that the war is long over and the robot armies his people have been building are in fact used as servants for a powerful conspiratorial elite that live in vast demesnes that have recovered from what was in fact a brief nuclear conflict. The destruction of cities and official bulletins are part of a global hoax, staged by those above ground to keep the earth free from its troglodyte hordes.

Disinformation: Blackout

W.G. Sebald

'Someone [...] ought to draw up a catalogue of types of buildings, listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less than normal size -- the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, the lock-keeper's lodge, the pavilion for viewing the landscape, the children's bothy in the garden -- are those that offer us at least a semblance of peace, whereas no one in his right mind could truthfully say that he liked a vast edifice such as the Palace of Justice on the old Gallows Hill in Brussels.'

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Penguin, 2002)

Bunker Busters

This last one is truly terrifying.

Marcel Breuer

Whitney Museum, New York, NY (1966)

Bison Mobile Pill Box

British Pathe: Attack on a Pill Box (1941)

Cai Guo-Qiang

The Boros Collection

See also David Sokol, 'Bunker Chic,' Metropolis Magazine, Oct 17, 2007.

World War I Pillbox with Office

© Copyright Keith Evans and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Pillbox IoE 466394. World War I Pillbox, Haddiscoe, Norfolk. Built of concrete with steel doors c.1916. A mid C20 weather-boarded office building was built on top. This pillbox guarded St Olave's bridge.

ROC Post Winterton, Norfolk

SubBrit ROC Database Brief history and a database of all ROC posts in the UK

23 Post Skelmorlie Restored ROC post in Ayrshire, Scotland

ROC Post Internal Diagram circa 1962

ROC Remembered

The Infinitesmal and the Infinite

'What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world?'

Peter Kennard

Peter Kennard, Haywain with Cruise Missiles (1980).

Kennard's photomontages are blunt instruments but this one has a humour and absurdity about it that sets it apart from the skulls and mushroom clouds that characterise his more Heartfield-like compositions.

Thom Andersen, Fred Halsted, Floyd Mutrux

The title of Andersen's film-essay Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) is borrowed from Fred Halsted's gay porn classic L.A. Plays Itself (1972).



Andersen is also, unsurprisingly, a fan of Floyd Mutrux's Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971), which, like Demy's Model Shop (see below), has some remarkable street photography. Mutrux did some great work in the 70s, both as director -- Aloha Bobby and Rose (1975), American Hot Wax (1978) -- and as writer on Two Lane Blacktop (1971) and The Christian Licorice Store (1971).

Kent Mackenzie, The Exiles (1961)

Amazingly, now on DVD.

D.J. Waldie

Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi

Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers at SculptureCenter

Matthew Coolidge discussing the CLUI

You Are Here- Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) from bree edwards on Vimeo.

From the 'You Are Here'  conference held in Houston,Texas, November 30 and December 1, 2007.

Cynthia Hooper

MEXIMPERIALI from Cynthia Hooper on Vimeo.

The Salton Sea

William Klein

Buckminster Fuller

Chris Marker, La Jetée (1963)

Michael Snow

Harun Farocki, War at a Distance [samples]

war at a distance samples from Gianni Wise on Vimeo.