(An)Archiving Greenham

In this short presentation Siegried Zylinski describes the seeing past as a collection of possibilities that one may use to be able to construct ‘something’ with which one can take into the future, which is its self also a collection of possibilities. When working with the archival material so carefully collected by Gwyn Kirk, and through examining the space of the common itself, threads of continuation emerge that can be understood in these terms.

As with the nuclear silos at Greenham Common, and their surrounding fences, Sillbury hill and the Avebury Stone circles are scheduled ancient monuments. The final decision to schedule a monument is taken by the Secretary of State for Digital, Media and Sport, who can also decide to withdraw it status. According to Historic England “The Schedule of Monuments has 19,854 entries (2016) and includes sites such as Roman remains, burial mounds, castles, bridges, earthworks, the remains of deserted villages and industrial sites. Monuments are…by definition, considered to be of national importance.”

In the presence of Sillbury Hill, after visiting the silos at Greenham, there is a sense of how both can be perceived through the lens of an archaeological imaginary, as described by Michael Shanks:“To recreate the world behind the ruin in the land…to bring alive the past-in-the-present, as in an historical novel, to cherish and work upon fragments of the past, what remains of the past in the present. This is the work of the archaeological imagination”

Walking through the fields that surround the village of Ash near Sevenoaks in Kent, past old ant-aircraft guns, you can encounter the former Ash Radar Station. Now part of The Bunker group of data centres, it is one of two centres in the group, the other being the former US command and control centre at Greenham common.

In 2016, The Bunker in Ash won TechWeekEurope’s Britain’s Most Picturesque Data Centre 2016’ competition,‘stunning the judges with a throwback design reminiscent of a time spent living in fear of nuclear war.’ According to the Silicon.co.uk ‘the barbed wire fence swung the judges in The Bunker’s favour, giving the data centre a truly historical aesthetic that runs in parallel to the futuristic operations happening inside.’

The non-violent actions being carried out by Extinction Rebellion seem to be directly descended from the protests carried out by members of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Similar methods are employed and also similar objections can be heard.

You can feel the resonance of Greenham in the warbling cries the go up when a member is arrested, resonant of the sounds made by Greenham women under similar circumstances. Although the action of XR can’t necessarily be described as anarchival it can be considered as part of a strong tradition, carried from Greenham common and before, of direct action and civil disobedience that resides in the cultural memory: Taking the lessons from actions of the past, in a contemporary context, as a means to effect the future.