Barriers to the Increase of our Aberdonian Photon Collection

Earlier this week, we were at Aberdeen Art Gallery, looking at the Aberdeen Artists' Society 2011 show. Which we recommend.

But that's not what we want to discuss today. During our visit, I took a handful of photos - some interesting photogenic aspects of the building's structure caught my eye. Here's some:

No sooner had the shutter closed on that last photo than an attendant started hassling us, saying that photography was forbidden. He indignantly told us that it was forbidden in some parts of the gallery, but not others. In those areas where photography was not forbidden, we'd have to fill in "a form" with "all your details" and then wait to see whether permission to take photos would be forthcoming. We were told that this system had been instituted "in the last few months". 

This is bizarre and disturbing. Taking photographs in art galleries is not something weird, unusual or sinister or dangerous. It's not subversive and it's not harmful; I've been doing it all my adult life in art galleries all over the world. Let us be clear: we can understand a restriction on photographing new work - the new work in the Aberdeen Artists' Society exhibition, for instance. It is perfectly reasonable that the artists would prefer that that new work not be photographed. (Yet the paradox exists that photographic copies of lots of the exhibited work are available in the exhibition catalogue for three quid, and the Aberdeen Artists Society Facebook page has lots more.)

But that day I wasn't even photographing any of the artworks in the gallery - and I told the attendant so. "Oh aye, they all say that" he retorted pugnaciously, but he did not ask to review the shots I'd taken. He appeared elbows-out chin-juttingly personally resentful of the very fact of our existence, and the fact that I laughingly questioned his unquestioning enforcement of a nonsensical rule nettled him greatly. He nearly had steam coming out of his ears. 

This is the fourth time that I have been approached and dealt a rebuke for simply taking photographs - collecting photons - in Aberdeen. First time was a couple of years ago on the top deck of the St Nicholas Centre, the second time was the now (in)famous incident on the top of the car-park of the Union Square shopping mall. Thirdly, the police traced and interviewed me after I'd photographed an office building in the west end of Aberdeen, and now I am told of severe restrictions on photography at Aberdeen Art Gallery. The frequency of these ridiculous rebukes is increasing. What's going on?

A contrasting experience perhaps helps illuminate the situation in Aberdeen. We were in London earlier in the spring, and found the time to visit the world-famous Tate Britain gallery. Stuffed full as it is of artworks of permanent global importance, we took loads and loads of photos there. At Tate Britain (just as at all other public galleries, except in Aberdeen) the attendants appear to actively accommodate visitors who want to take photos. Sometimes restrictions are put on flash photography for understandable conservation reasons; but otherwise, photography is regarded as desirable and normal; expected and even necessary for the living artistic health of a gallery, its patrons and its attendees. Why is it different in Aberdeen?

William Blake
'Thus did Job...'
One of many photos we took in Tate Britain

After enjoying Tate Britain, we crossed Vauxhall Bridge and took loads and loads of photos of the most security sensitive building in the UK. We hung about on the waterfront terrace in view of  CCTV clusters and MI6 spooks on balcony ciggie-breaks, who could see perfectly well that we were openly photographing interesting aspects of the building. We were not approached; we were not prevented from doing what we wanted to do. Earlier in the day, we'd passed outside the Ministry of Defence and we took a few photos. Again, unchallenged. And we'd lingered outside the fabulous modernist slab-and-plinth edifice of Millbank Tower, home of the ruling Tory Party, and again we took some photos. Again, unchallenged. Why is it different in Aberdeen? 

Spook Central

 

General Central

Tory Central

How is it that we can take as many photographs as we like in a world famous art gallery in London, but we're effectively prevented from doing so in the minor provincial gallery in Aberdeen? How is it that we can take as many photographs as we like of extremely sensitive sites involved in national security, defence and government in London, but the police only take an interest when we photograph a shopping mall and office building in Aberdeen? What the devil is wrong with this town?

A room in the Aberdeen Art Gallery complex where we were told that photography is strictly forbidden is the fantastically neoclassical Memorial Court. We were told by the attendant that it is "disrespectful" to photograph war memorials. What? Why then does the Aberdeen Art Gallery website host its own photos of this room? Is this photo somehow less "disrespectful" than any I might take?

Again, to contrast this attitude with what we experienced during our recent visit to London; when we walked along Victoria Embankment we were entranced to see the new-ish Battle of Britain Memorial; a high-relief frieze by Paul Day. So emotional, engaging and moving is this memorial, so popular is the site, that kids even pose for photos interacting with the memorial; they act taking part in the fighter-pilot scramble, they touch it, understanding history. Photos help reinforce these impressions, they buttress our memories - helping us remember; a personal memento for a public memorial. What's disrespectful about that?

Why is it different in Aberdeen?

Men of Violence. Enough!

To our shame, we hadn't noticed until the week before last that Aberdeen is to gain yet another statue commemorating men of violence. This new statue, to sit in the  Castlegate at the heart of the historic town, commemorates and lionises the Gordon Highlanders regiment; to remember them "with pride and gratitude".

At the outset, let us acknowledge the regrettable fact that war and war memorials are part of the weave of the fabric from which our society and civilisation is tailored. We have many war memorials, including the most impressive, beautiful and apt statuary and colonnade, reliefs and inscriptions at Cowdray Hall on Schoolhill.

Splendid, sober, restrained, appropriate.

Unfortunately, and contrasting with the sober memorial at Schoolhill, the new Gordons statue will join with and augment the effect of all the other pompous martial statuary which venerates people of violence and slaughter and which peppers our town centre like the cluster munitions which today exemplify the state-of-the-art in these people's stock-in-trade.

Now, let's be clear, some of these individuals made important contributions to our town, to our country, indeed (arguably) to the wider sweep of western civilisation - but the one thing which links them, the crimson thread which runs them all through, is violent slaughter.

• William Wallace (Rosemount Viaduct)
• Prince Albert (Rosemount Viaduct)
• Edward VII  (Union Bridge - some of the supporting statuary around his edifice appears to promote racist ideas)
• Gordon of Kartoum (Schoolhill Pocket Park)
• George, 5th Duke of Gordon (Golden Square)
• Queen Victoria (Townshouse and Queen Cross)
• The Stuart Monarchs (Mercat Cross, Castlegate)
• Robert the Bruce (forthcoming, Broad St.)

What a big sword!

To this list will be added the new Gordons commemorative statue. We must ask: What message about our town does this transmit? Is this a message of open welcome, or is it rather one of vainglorious militaristic bellicosity and triumphalism? Will venerating violence in this way add to our prestige? Or will it just make us look like chauvinistic jingoistic swaggering braggart ruffians with an effusively mawkish streak? Moreover, what is the message which this sends to coming generations of Aberdonians? Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Municipiuum Mori?

We would submit that the Gordons are already quite well-served by memorials (some of which highlight adventures in the mechanised mass-slaughter of 'natives' which today might be regarded as something to refer to The Hague) and a historic regiment could hope for no better commemoration than their splendid and award-winning museum at Rubislaw.

Meanwhile, national bard Robbie Burns stands alone above doomed Union Terrace Gardens and, farther up the Denburn, Lord Byron stands in the grounds of the Grammar School. Our two statuary acknowledgements and commemorations of creative (rather than destructive) genius. Men of peace and justice. Men who literally lauded love and practiced what they preached. Though Burns wasn't from anywhere round here, the sentiments he expressed and the creative genius by which he transmitted his philosophy stands embodied in this statue. Burns clutches not the swords of Wallace or George; not the guns of the Gordons - rather, Burns delicately holds a single mountain daisy in his hand. Byron clutches a book and and a pen.

Mary Garden's little plaque in a verge
off Cragie Loanings.
It's not enough.

We suggest that, rather than have new statuary commemorating men of violence, we would do far better to add to and augment the Burns and Byron statues with statues of men and women of peace, creative genius and scientific and social progress. There are many candidates of international standing, and some of them are even from Aberdeen.

• Mary Garden (Opera Diva; born, retired and buried in Aberdeen)
• James Clerk Maxwell (Physicist at Aberdeen Uni)
• Bertie Charles Forbes (Publisher born locally - founder of "Forbes")
• George Jamieson (Influential Aberdeen portrait painter of the 17th Century)
• John Mallard (instrumental in the development of MRI and PET medical scanning technology at Aberdeen Uni)
• Mary Slessor (Aberdeen-born promotor of women's rights)
• Andrew Carnegie (endowed the Central Library)
• Robert William Thomson (From Stonehaven - loads of stuff, but mostly invented pneumatic tyres and the hydraulic dry dock.)

Some of these people are commemorated in little plaques around town. This list isn't exhaustive - we're sure there are many more equally worthy of immortalisation in stone or bronze in the heart of our town. Of these, our personal favourite is James Clerk Maxwell. Without Maxwell's work on electromagnetic theory you wouldn't be reading these words or, indeed living anything like the life you live today. Maxwell truly is a "without whom", critical path, nexus figure. His work at Aberdeen University on the true nature of light, electricity and magnetism, and his special genius in noting that these three manifestations are but three aspects of the one phenomenon, is one of the greatest ever advances in physics. His work is comparable in importance to that of Einstein or Newton. We're not kidding and we don't say this lightly.

We suggest that our town would be much better served by erecting a statue to this colossus of modern science, using as he did his genius to enlighten the world and help generate the future which we live in today. A new statue of a man who can wield his intellect to improve the world would be a much more fitting addition to our town than a new statue of men waving guns and/or swords about.

The plaque on Union Street is the size of a sheet of letter paper.

Thin Places Delineated at the Broad and Gallows Hills

A couple of months ago, we were on Aberdeen's Broad Hill to visit the innovative and subversive art installation: "By Order of Me".

Some of the artworks invite the viewer to consider the psychogeographical aspects of our situation ("You make the world the world"), as well as the psycho-historical aspects of the location ("Just think - there used to be bears here"). Go along with an open mind and time on your hands, observe the signs and you'll see what we mean. The installation is to remain in place until the end of the year.

It was a most raw February day when we were there, with a high tide battering hard against the esplanade which forms the sea-wall protecting the links from the North Sea. We walked under the esplanade and between the beach and the Broad Hill, then traversed the Trinity Cemetery up to the summit of Gallows Hill. Our interpretation of and interaction with the landscape inspired by the artifacts and the topography of the area.

Under the esplanade

Esplanade surveillance cluster.
For your safety and comfort.

From the top of Broad Hill, we see some remarkable views over the town lying to the west and, it being a prominent landmark, we're not surprised to find both an OS Trig Point pillar and a granite boundary stone at the hill's summit.

South face "R"

Both photos are of the same stone, we think it marks the boundary of fishing rights, the incised groove runs west to east pointing seaward. The inscribed letters will be the initials of the proprietors of the fishing rights. We're not certain of this, so if you know better, let us know...

North face "ND"

Traces of the foundations of recent structures can be seen in the low-lying flat links land - now a cricket pitch - beneath the hill. The area was heavily militarised during the Second World War, reflecting one of its historic uses as a convenient open and flat place to hold wappenshaws - "weapon-showings" - mustering of men under arms to satisfy clan or feudal lords that a suitably large, fit, well-equipped and bellicose corps of men could be gathered to execute their war-like bidding. We can't say whether the marks we see are the outlines of military camp structures and emplacements, or whether they are to do with the more conducive sporting and leisure uses of this land, which have included horse-racing, livestock shows, football, golf, galas and markets.

Impressions of previous land-use.

The shifting patterns of land use in this marginal zone between the town and the sea reflect the dynamic nature of this littoral zone itself. It is said that from time to time in pre-history the mouth of the River Don would become silted up and its waters would flow southwards, innundating the area now occupied by a links golf course and exiting to the North Sea somewhere around the latitude of the Broad Hill. Recent geographers doubt this assertion, the impervious clay bed of the links being at too high a level to allow the river to flow all the way south to the Broad Hill before finding an outlet or re-breaching its established one. However, the past undoubtedly saw the area characterised by a dynamic and shifting landscape with boggy quicksands, tidal lagoons, freshwater and brackish lochs (the Canny Sweet Pots - a bastardisation of Gaelic roughly translating as "the head of the settlement by the deep pools of water) fed by the Powis Burn and Banstickle Burns, which now run in underground culverts beneath the links. At their confluence, those burns became known as the Tile Burn which had a tidal flow allowing sea-going vessels to navigate some half-a-mile inland to the 18th century tile and brick works which gave the burn its name.

On the day when we visited, when a very high tide and a storm blowing in from the sea caused the waves to bluster and batter against the sea wall with more violence than we'd ever seen before, it was very easy to imagine a similar day in a time before modern sea defenses, the water inundating the land and reconfiguring the shifting sands, lagoons and watercourses.

This feeling of impermanence; of the diaphanous edge between something and nothing - the delicate balance between certainty and inconstancy which we felt and experienced as we stood braced against the onshore gale surveying the foreshore - put us in mind of the concept of the "Thin Place" in Celtic spirituality and the early Christian church. I've heard there's a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, and that in the "thin places" that distance is even smaller. The early Christian church in Ireland, in Wales and in Scotland sought out these "thin places" for pilgrimage and in some cases to co-opt the sites and plant their missions on the foundations of pre-existing spirituality.

We feel that others have felt the same about this site throughout the history of our town and perhaps before. On the western slope of the Broad Hill, descending into a hollow and then ascending up to Gallows Hill is the Trinity Cemetery, which hosts a unique monument to people who've willed their remains to medical science for research.

The increase of knowledge and the advance of medicine

An ancient scabby dog-shit strewn right-of-way leads up the side of the graveyard to the summit Gallows Hill. As if to emphasise the theme of changeability and inconstancy, as we mounted the summit, the weather changed dramatically, the skies cleared and the sun shone strong and low in the late winter sky.

A young couple on the summit of Gallows Hill

Looking back down the right-of-way from Gallows Hill
 to Broad Hill in the backgound, North Sea beyond.

Some old maps show a powder magazine sited on Gallows Hill, and a rifle range extending down the right-of-way between Broad Hill and Gallows Hill, chiming with some of the martial aspects of this part of Aberdeen. An ancient site of execution, where the gibbet remained in place until at least 1776, the choice of this site for the storage of volatile military materiel was apt. No doubt folk would avoid the area if they could, because of its associations with crime and punishment, death and bodily corruption. The Victorian Trinity Cemetery tempers the negative psychogeographical aspects of Gallows Hill somewhat with the usual mawkish Victorian aspirations towards spiritual redemption and resurrection in an idealised afterlive of child-cherubs and young-women-as-angels. These Victorian signs and symbols strike a saccharine note with us in the 21st century, and so merely add a further freight of peculiar queerness to the undeniably singular atmosphere which is embodied in the topography, artifacts and history of this area, despite it being very close to the town centre today.

Clinging to the old rugged cross

Gravediggers baronial-gothic cottage

The hill is marked with a couple of 19th century (probably) boundary stones and a much older stone, marked with a cross. The retired grave-digger (no, really) who lives in the splendid Gothic-Victorian pavilion guarding the gates of the graveyard told us that this was a "Doupin Stone" like the one out west at Wynford, but we can't corroborate that. Aberdeen City Council's archaeology pages don't appear to have a record for it and the RCAHMS record it as a boundary stone.

Groove-incised boundary stone.

Boundary stone inscribed "TH"

Cross-marked stone

The hill overlooks Aberdeen Football Club's stadium at Pittodrie. We understand that the hill was at one time known as the Miser's Hilly, because hard-up or parsimonious football fans could watch the match free from the prominence. We suggest you read Alex Mitchell's pieces on the Ancient Burgh's of Aberdeen in the Aberdeen Voice for more background.

Remains of a bonfire on the summit

There used to be a manure works nearby to the north at Linksfield, involved in the production of fertiliser and chemicals for the leather tanning industry and bleachings. The feedstock for for the works was provided by a police stables, it's dung-heap occupying the site of the present-day football stadium, the name of which - Pittodrie - is from the Gaelic "pitt" - place of and "todhair" - manure; bleaching. 

The Manichean paradox embodied in the fact that the filth of manure is transmuted into an agent of purity: the bleach for the tanneries and bleachings, similarly chimes with the transformative and dynamically charged psychogeography inherent in the shifting topography of the area and how that in turn has affected our use of it. A place of comings and goings; of shifting surfaces; of things which are not as they seem; of deaths, planned and natural; of aggression and recreation; and of crime and redemption all in a "thin place", a place on the edge between the land and the sea, the edgelands between here and there; the border between the past and the future. The difference between something and nothing.

Beach Boulevard Tenement, March Stones, Public Art

On our way to visit "By Order of Me", we walked from Castle Hill to Links Road down Cotton Street, parallel to the Beach Boulevard in an area where industry is giving way to retail and residence. On the corner of Cotton Street and Links Road, we spotted something we'd missed last week when we went to look at the big weapon of embarrassed prestige.

The wall has been built over the top of a granite boundary stone, only the 'BD' of its 'ABD' mark is visible. Well, we assume it has an 'ABD' mark. Probability suggests that it is, but there's no definite way of knowing.

Along with the stone we spotted about 15 metres east of this stone, this is one of what we at Other Aberdeen have started calling "unknown stones", that's to say, boundary stones (or "march" stones) which do not appear on Aberdeen City Council's Sites and Monuments Record web pages. The RCHAMS record says "nothing is now visible of these stones".

Across the road, the post-modern tenements which are bounded by the railway, the Beach Boulevard, Links Road and Constitution Street have some nice detail touches on the Boulevard side: porthole stairwell windows, asymmetrical profile and frontage, colourful penthouse storey. Unfortunately, the Links Road frontage is a little less uplifting.

Beach Boulevard

Links Road

But it's inside, in the semi-public, semi-private space of the courtyard/carpark that we find some real gems of placemaking, worthy of this spot's maritime associations, what with it being quite close to the beach and all...

Our town is dotted with new-build tenement developments of this kind, invariably with a car-park and circulation area in the centre (rather than gardens). No doubt there are many similar instances of semi-public art. We'll try to seek them out.

By Order Of Me at the Broad Hill

"By Order Of Me" is a public art installation on Aberdeen's Broad Hill which suggests "challenging new ways for people to interact with and enjoy their urban environment". Splendid! Walk down the Beach Boulevard or Constitution Street or Urquhart Road and go and see it - the signs mock the Aberdeen City Council signs which more usually tell young people what not to do - you know the ones "No Skateboarding. By order of ACC", "No Ball Games. By order of ACC", "Keep off the Grass. By order of ACC". It's intended that the installation will stay in place for a whole year; encouraging visitors to step out of themselves, and jarring them out of their usual view of the world.

The installation is part of the National Theatre of Scotland's Extreme Aberdeen Project and is the final "trailblazer" event which builds towards the site specific theatre/dance/extreme sport/interactive art event: "Nothing to See Here".

Which we're very much looking forward to seeing.

Another Pictish Homage - Mile-End at Beechwood.

Having felt all brave and urban-explorerey looking round Oakbank, we needed to recouperate and sit down and have a nice refreshing and relaxing sip of tea from our flasks. So, looking for a nice place to rest, we found ourselves sitting on the un-dry-stane dyke at the entrance to the new Mile End School off Midstocket Road. The new Mile-End School is on the site of the former Beechwood School, which was for kids with special educational needs. Both schools are integrated now and the former Mile-End School sits empty to the east, about a half mile down Midstocket Road. We'll be keeping an eye on that.

Guarding the entrance to the new school is this homage to the Pictish Symbol Stones which are strewn all over Pict-land from the Forth to Shetland. We've noted the sculptor's work before, at Ruthrieston Pocket Park.

There have been about 350 known Pictish stones discovered to date. Historic Scotland have put together an excellent website which gives lots of information about the Picts and the artifacts and enigmas they left us to wonder over and waste our time blabbering on about. 

There are no doubt many, many more which have been ploughed under fields, biding their time and keeping their council, leaving us to guess and speculate on the nature of the Pictish enigma and their obscure symbol-language. Doubtless many more languish undiscovered, hidden in plain sight having been incorporated into more recent buildings or walls like the Brandsbutt Stone at Inverurie, which has now been restored. 

We don't know what we think about that. Certainly the stone should have been rescued from where it had been unthinkingly secreted -  unseen and unstudied. But some might suggest that the Blue Peter-y concrete patch 'restoration' almost mocks the stone.

Like the Brandsbutt Stone, the new sculpture at Mile-End School shows a "V-Rod" symbol in combination with a crescent.

Beneath the V-Rod and crescent we see a "Z-Rod" in combination with a "Double Sun". As mentioned above, the meaning of the symbols is obscure, but some analysts suggest that the V-Rod is a symbol of death, and that the Z-Rod in comination with the double-disk (or double-sun) represents the solar cycle and by association the cycle of life, death and rebirth into an afterlife. So maybe the sculpture represents the re-birth of the school in its new location.

Beneath the pictograms, we see an inscription in the Ogham alphabet which we can transliterate thus:

BUNIGDIFMNIEDERIT

OBARDHEATHIUN

Though perhaps we've gone wrong somewhere.

The new school with Foresterhill behind, looking to the skyscrapers of Cairncry

Autumn suits Midstocket Road

Guerilla, Public and Semi-Public Art in Queens Cross

Returning from our visit to the Crypto-Communist Roof of John Lewis, we walked back to Other Aberdeen Towers in the heart of downtown upscale Pitmuxton via a route suggested by this photo of the view from the Roof of John Lewis.

We're glad that we chose to walk that way, rather than slalom in-and-out between all the chuggers on Union St (bah!). We're glad we went off-the-beaten track, because, as so often, we were delighted by what we saw...

Smile, life is what u make it

This advice reminded us of the fellow psychogeographer (and guerilla artist) who we mentioned the other day, Lewis Dryburgh and his "A Message for You" guerilla art project which he conducted this summer in Aberdeen. It's always comforting to come across stuff like this - strangers sending uplifting and comforting messages out into the world. You could almost feel like you were being benignly watched over.

We said 'benignly"!

Eeek!

We were also delighted to come across a customised example of this most invisible and ubiquitous piece of street furniture; the "Bigg" electrical junction box (they control the streetlamps).

This junction box has been jazzed-up.
Action Art. Dynamic. More, please.

We like garden displays - even the kitschest gnome-tableau speaks of someone who cares deeply about their surroundings - and in Queens Cross the residents bring a sophisticated edge to the traditional garden gonk.

The feeling of being watched over continues.

Who knows what scenarios are played out by the personifications of these characters in this highly sophisticated display (below) with its toy-box juxtaposition of totems, tikis and teddies. Bart Simpson lies supine, his catapult broken and Thomas the Tank engine is derailed. The black horse standing at the foot of the eagle-headed totem-pole consults Scooby Doo for advice. Let's hope he gets it. The wooden woodsman looks stoically and silently on - a knowing smile spreading thinly across his lips, his axe-arm relaxed (but ready) as he surveys the scene with the bucket-living water-spirit. The teddies don't know what to make of it all.

Fantastical. Phantasmagorical. Literally - look it up.

Winner.