Owen Hatherley’s book Militant Modernism touches on Cold War paranoia and alien worlds and alien visitors. Hatherley adds to the well-known proposal that the plethora of American 1950s space B-movies egged on by McCarthyist Hollywood, were a response to the perception of Soviet/ Communist threat.
Interestingly, early Russian communists and avante-garde found great sympathy with the notion of otherworldly, alien societies and utopian extra-terrestrial cultures, as Hatherly calls it, Martian Marxism. This was also depicted in Soviet writing and films from Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star (1908)- Socialist utopia on Mars – to Yakov Protazanov’s 1924 film, “Aelita, Queen of Mars”. Or the novel Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky Brothers, 1972) filmed as Stalker by Tarkovsky in 1979, which tells of the Zone – an area of contaminated wasteland and industrial ruins following an extra-terrestrial visit. The notion of such a contaminated Zone of course, is a central part of the post-Rendlesham sightings, with the ground still ‘different’ and growth stilted some 10 or 15 years after the event.
Hatherley points out that HG Wells’ early Martians (perhaps our own visual prototype?) were “a fantasy of anti-imperialist revenge” (Militant Modernism 2008:43) as Wells was disgusted with the extermination of the aboriginal population of Tasmania. War of the Worlds, was perhaps a way of showing the same treatment meted out to the West. Wells’ Martian war cry – “ULL-AA” – was used in 1919 for Viktor Shklovsky’s “manifesto for the alienation effect, ‘Ullya, Ullya, Martians’.” (Militant Modernism 2008:44)
Aelita excerpt:http://youtu.be/qL6hG1erfFo
Tangentially, See also: http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/?s=ufo
Dominique Rey
I think I saw the UFO-Uk programme the other day. Here are the notes I made (in Stickies) whilst watchingthe show and simultaneously having a telephone conversation:???
NEAR MISS air miss
1944 fromm Essen to Mildenhall red balls of fire
1912 Sheerness essex docks – Churchill admiralty responsibility
east anglian coast 1996 October, police rang in first directly south east from Skegness – videod moving light relayed to Yarmouth coastguard. Call to raf neatishead, used radar, trawler / tanker vessel at sea is this star Veda?, or is it due to popularity of x files
but no aircraft scrambled. also sighted over Boston Lincs as a fixed light- explained as church ‘boston stump’? venus called queen of the ufos
sighted
aid & abet
The image is an information board in a ‘control’ hub at RAF Neatishead Radar Museum. Not sure how it all works. Perhaps used when tracking signals such as the Lincolnshire sightings?
Dominique Rey
Dominique is absolutely right: there is so much UFO material and so many possibilities its hard to keep up. But in the spirit of getting stuff out there i have loaded the radar video footage and sent a copy to Aid and Abet also. Its the closing tomorrow night – the last 4 weeks has passed quickly. It is an exciting way of working and enjoyable.
I received an unexpected letter from the Radar Museum. I posted a cheque for the entrance fee (we didn’t have enough money when we arrived!) and requested a receipt for the project accounts. The letter was written by the Museum’s Manager & Curator Chris Morshead and he had, i think searched out my name and found this blog.
Dominique and I had pondered why we hadn’t asked the room guides about Operation Charlie when we visited the museum. (We wondered if we were afraid of looking foolish perhaps). The letter from Chris was full of information, the Cold War Ops Room we visited would have been in operation during Operation Charlies time also – he alerted me to a programme made this year UFO UK which features “Doug Robb, ex-Manager of the Museum who was also a Warrent Officer (Operations) at Neatishead just before he left the service”. The Museum has a copy of the film and we have been sent complimentary tickets for a return visit which is great, they are happy to look out the film for us so we can watch it while we are there. I will sit and write reply in due course and Dominique and i must book our visit.
http://natgeotv.com/uk/ufo-uk-new-evidence
Nicola Naismith
I love these lights. I just love these lights.
We’d hoped to produce another limited edition poster, same layout as the Rendlesham Traces Poster, but with images and material from the Radar Museum, (including lights, which were after all a phenomenon at the heart of Charlie). However, the exhibition is finishing on Saturday, so some debate as to the purpose of such a print.
I think that the research material from our second touring day out in East Anglia has been disadvantaged and placed in the shade purely by virtue of being second. We have been working within a strict time frame dictated by the exhibition structure /proposal and have spent most of the time sorting, uploading, downloading, processing all the ‘stuff’ connected to the Rendlesham incident, including our long day tour in that Sufffolk area.
Probably both Nicola and I have material from the Radar Museum that still needs to see the light of day in some form, but I wonder, within which structure and under what auspices? I certainly have a fair bit of video and some sound that I’d like to have time to finish editing. Poor Operation Charlie has been rather left out in the cold. And what about these lights?
Dominique Rey
We gave our talk at Aid and Abet on Saturday. It was interesting to present the very beginnings of our respective research interests. We presented our talk in a small room, a constructed space within the wider space which is Aid and Abet. Given our recent trip to The Radar Museum it put me in mind of some kind of RAF briefing room which I imagine I saw when I was a child, when I would, on the odd occassion, go with dad to the control tower.
We were lucky enough to have Ailie Rutherford who was there to carry out her Ganzfeld Experiment after our talk. She is an artist who is based at The Royal Standard and although not native to Liverpool, knows it well. Whilst talking about an image I had of the Clarion Clubhouse in Liverpool, The Arc, I was able to ask her about the area and what is happening there now. She also have a working interest in cycling clubs so we plan to catch up when we go to Liverpool.
So we need to plan our trip to Liverpool and complete the rest of the UFO data / research – its been a busy project and we need to take some time to contemplate and deliberate. The three strands: Satellite Portfolio, UFO Research and the Liverpool Inexpert Talk has kept us busy, but its been a learning curve as all of these types of projects are. We want to capitalise on this new methodology of making and collaborating by consider how we could extend the invitation to other artists who could make use of our skills as research assistants and collaborators.
In addtion to our artist talk Saturday also featured Norwich away to Liverpool with a very reasonable result of 1 -1.
Nicola Naismith
