The Red Flag

Okay, where are we? The filming was constantly hampered not only by questions over security and safety but mainly due to the deluge of rain that shut off the very road that I needed to access in order to get the site I had selected. As such, when an opportunity came to film I had to grab it. This included racing out so quickly in the mist at sunrise one morning, that I omitted to take any gloves and my fingers nearly broke off in the freezing cold standing for hours on top of a hill fort with my camera. At another point I had to haul my teenage son out of bed who was helping me and double the financial incentive in order to get to the Plain just before the morning sun broke through. But bit by bit I had the footage. At other points I had to trawl through decades of early Porton Down field trials kept on film at the Imperial War Museum covering early experiments and training exercises with soldiers that were anything but pleasant to go through.

At one point though I discovered film footage of the most surreal exercise clearly carried out on Salisbury Plain. I knew I had to incorporate it in the film and tried every avenue I could to get license to use it. Obviously many artists make videos using a montage of clips without gaining license from the copyright holder to do so but as I was working with the Imperial War Museum and the DSTL media department at Porton Down, which has a large section whose sole duty is to chase up the illegal use of their material, I wasn’t taking any chances. In the end I had no choice but to re-enact the experiment myself which actually brought a totally new dimension to the entire work.

During this time Prudence Maltby, who was the instigator of the project, was constantly working to build connections, follow-up areas of interest, hold meetings with potential collaborators etc. On the advice of the Council we went for further funding to support a particular set of workshops to be held with an organisation which supports the homeless, a connection I have built up over recent years. We literally worked our socks off and still are, for me, having to dash out for instance, one evening to catch a particular council meeting and personally argue our case for funding when it came up right at the end of a three hour meeting of local issues.

One of the highlights of our research has been a personal tour of the Defence Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear centre in Winterbourne Gunner where soldiers, journalists and anyone working in the path of chemical warfare are trained to survive. Being shown round at the end of the day, when the building was almost empty, we had the opportunity to look through their collection of equipment and protective masks and clothing from World War I to the current day. We talked for some time with the member of staff, who was incredibly generous with his time, and I discovered when we chatted, that he had been nearby when a dear friend was murdered on the streets of Belfast in the last days of the troubles. It’s a small world indeed, and a sad world at times.

For a couple of months during this time I lived and breathed this work, constantly editing and re-editing it in my head, rearranging the footage and the narrative again and again, going to sleep at night and running the work in my mind from start to finish to find a pattern that felt right. In the end, which often happens with video, the various scenes and recordings etc fell naturally into place with very little manoeuvring on my part. In a sense, although it still involved endless painful fine tuning in the editing, the film felt like it dictated its own rhythm.

The next leg of the project involved meeting up with the senior archaeologist from the MoD to look at getting access to the Plain. Again many e-mails back and forth and eventually a meeting date was set. I have some experience of being on an army camp due to a workshop project in a military school at one point but generally, like the corporate world, I feel like a complete fish out of water in this environment. I may be completely off key here but I feel that the military environment is just about as far apart from the contemporary art environment as possible. Whereas in the corporate world there is room for creative thinking as long as it leads to profit, in the military world, you have a structure to conform to where any sort of deviation or individuality threatens to undermine, what needs to be, an extremely rigid system.

Everyone was very friendly however and the senior archaeologist gave me a wonderful overview of the history of Salisbury Plain. I couldn’t begin to tell you the wealth of activity that has taken place there over the centuries from the truly staggering achievement of Stonehenge through to the strange and desolate constructions the MoD have erected for training in various conflicts. With particular focus on World War I the Plain is littered with remnants of the various international troops that trained there, Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders in particular. From the soldiers carvings remaining on the trees in the wooded areas, to the graves when illness took the lives of many soldiers, and the Giant Kiwi carved into the landscape to keep bored and mischievous New Zealanders busy until repatriation, the place has endless stories to tell. But back to logistics.

The next step was training to receive my yellow pass which would allow access to the areas that were sealed off to the general public. Again many e-mails, many phone calls, and eventually the training day came. Another bizarre episode where a sergeant major terrified me and a group of amateur archaeologists with photos of unfortunate individuals who have picked up debris on the Plain or wandered into the pathway of a speeding tank and not lived to tell the tale.

Armed with my yellow pass, a map of the military Plain which made little sense to me and a table of planned military manoeuvres for the next few weeks that was full of baffling acronyms (the army survive on acronyms), I questioned my chances of survival. I had already had one experience with my son where we were happily trudging over land to the replica German village (mostly open to the public), when machine gun fire ripped across our path and sent us flying back to the car.

In the end I shouldn’t have worried as despite all this planning, training and confirmation I accidently got through on the phone to a sergeant major in a training session who, in between yelling and gunfire, questioned what it was I was doing, insisted I go through a whole raft of red tape involving thousands of pounds for a licence, which, even then I was told was almost certainly likely to result in access being denied as it may not show the military in a good light. To cut a long story short, and after he had pulled in various higher departments the next day on the matter, I finally gave up the fight on this one.

Bearing in mind that while this was going on, I was also wrangling (on endless emails) with DSTL at Porton Down and juggling a host of other projects, it turned out to be a massively stressful time altogether.

It’s difficult to know where to begin, I have pushed so many doors, followed up so many leads, often drowning in red tape just trying to get access to these places. Much time was initially lost with MOD personnel being abroad and unable to return calls or having the wrong contact names or e-mail addresses. Wherever possible I began to talk to everyone I met about the project. Gradually I began to build up a picture of the history of this area.

Living in a village on the borders of the Porton down land, many of my friends work somewhere on the Plain whether in the MOD or within the DST L laboratories themselves and were able to furnish me with some fascinating information. Eventually with time slipping quickly away, one friend with a serious amount of clout within the organisation managed to get me a meeting with the media department.

Salisbury plain is split between the land managed by the MOD for military training and the chemical and biological defence laboratories, managed by the organisation DST L. With three months having passed with little more having been achieved than a lot of e-mails whizzing back and forward I finally had meetings lined up with both organisations. Before any filming could take place, I would need to reassure them that no security would be breached.

Arriving at DST L I had the required security clearance at reception and a driver was summoned to take me to building five. ‘Wow! Building Five?’ he said with raised eyebrows, making me more than a little nervous. When I got there I was brought into a room with eight people around the table. I passed out my handouts, details of the exhibition, the proposed work and the list of the areas and items I was hoping to film in the coming months.

To cut a long story short, it was not an easy meeting. One by one we went down the list as each item was crossed off and denied. My intentions were challenged and time and time again I had to gather up my resolve and keep pushing. I had come so far to get this meeting I couldn’t let myself crumble and leave without anything gained. Eventually we agreed on a few possibilities that could be explored and a plan to move forward.

I guess I got a taste of what it’s like outside of the world of socially engaged art projects, teaching, exhibiting etc. No one was going to hold my hand through this process and it was quite clear this was going to be a seriously steep learning curve.

Part of my Re:view bursary put me in touch with a writer who, when hearing about the current project I was involved with said, ”you really must start a blog on that as the process is so worth documenting.” To be honest I’ve been so absorbed in the whole thing that I have neglected some of the documentation process so now I feel it’s time I look back and note the journey from the beginning.

Prudence Maltby is a freelance curator I have worked with before and is an artist in her own right. When she approached me to team up with herself and Henny Burnett, to create an exhibition which would coincide with the World War I centenary, I was really drawn to the focus of their subject matter. Obviously there is anything but a dearth of World War I centred projects going on but what Pru was interested in a slightly different. All of us live on the outskirts of Salisbury Plain and gradually, since moving here, I have got used to the idea of the red flags and secretive fences which curtail our movements (from Belfast will have plenty of experience of no-go areas). Pru’s project was to focus in on this space, particularly on the marking and scarring of the land as a result of its military interaction, hence the name Cicatrix – the scar of unhealed wound. Pru specifically wanted me to create a video piece for the exhibition and I instantly wanted to explore what was beyond those red flags that I pass every day of my life.

Having secured an Arts Council grant and Wiltshire Council support for the project, in October of last year we really got the go-ahead and I began to talk. I began to talk to the people whose work takes them beyond the red flags.

I discovered that Salisbury Plain is littered with ancient barrows, undisturbed as the cordoned off land has preserved much of a landscape unchanged since Neolithic times. I discovered military training grounds strewn with the wreckage of tanks used as target practice. I discovered mockups of built-up areas in Germany, Afghanistan and even the borders of my own home country. I discovered the village of Imber, emptied of his inhabitants overnight, two weeks before Christmas during World War II for training, the people of which, despite promises, were never allowed to return, and whose properties remain, ghostlike, trapped in a time warp to this day.

And I have discovered the juniper bushes. Their strange, sculpted forms pepper the landscape, but cordoning off the land which has resulted in the preservation of one of the largest chalk land expanses in Europe, not to mention numerous flora and fauna, for the juniper bush, has spelt disaster. With rabbiting from the local inhabitants and sheep keeping the grasses to a manageable level, juniper once thrived in the area, but despite a resurgence during the invasion of myxomatosis on the rabbit population in the 50’s, as the centenary approaches, sadly, most of the juniper will be reaching the end of their hundred-year life span, and their dried out skeletons litter the landscape.

But it is the land closest to where I live that I was most interested in. Beyond these fences lies the laboratories of DSTL, often simply known as Porton Down. It is here that, since the first gas attacks in World War I, experiments have continued into chemical and biological warfare. This site is infamous the world over and they are not known to open their doors to anyone. Getting access was the first task on my research list.