Csepel Bunker
"The longer I worked on the reconstruction the more I began to see parallels between my workspace and the workspace of the bunker: the furniture, the tools, the maps, the documents, etc."
Csepel Bunker is an installation arising from a visit to a World War II and Cold War bunker in Csepel, the industrial sector of Budapest, used up until the 1980s for a range of purposes, including preparating and training for survival in the event of nuclear attack. At the time of the visit, in 2010 the bunker remained largely intact and rich in reminders of its past uses and functions.
The installation Csepel Bunker arose out of a collaboration between the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (HUFA) and Chelsea School of Art doctoral students and staff. In October 2010, the Chelsea and HUFA team spent a week in Budapest researching the Csepel industrial region of Budapest.
This included a visit to a 1940s bunker that was used up until the 1980s for a range of purposes, including training for survival post nuclear attack. This visit resulted in an exhibition entitled Csepel Works at the Labor Gallery in Budapest, 2011, and images of the exhibition and the group visit to the bunker and the surrounding industrial units can be found here
Inside the bunker
Frozen in time, the bunker's content appeared as left at abandonment; it looked as if its occupants had just stopped what they were doing one day and walked away, leaving everything behind them. These portables spoke of the bunker's function as propaganda and as a potential shelter in the event of a nuclear war. It also spoke of a way of life and of the labour accomplished in the building..
Once back in London, I could recall little of the bunker. The photographs I took in the bunker did not provide a complete record of the architecture of the building so, in an attempt to document the bunker fully, I harvested my companions’ photographs..
Photograph albums ordered for reconstruction, e.g., by room, by object type, etc.
Using the photographs, I started to draw up plans of the building based on what was visible in them; what could be inferred or recalled from them; what I could recollect of the building; and what my knowledge of buildings in general suggested. Subsequently, I built a model of the building from my plans.
Plans and models: interior and exterior of the bunker
Models of the interior arrangement of the bunker
Ultimately, the enterprise was futile as a significant portion of the model, which was rational in the sense of being divided into floors and rooms linked together by stairs, corridors and doors, could not be verified from the images and the testimony available to me. As a result, the model is part representation and part invention.
The longer I worked on the reconstruction the more I began to see parallels between my workspace and the workspace of the bunker: the furniture, the tools, the maps, the documents, etc.
In retrospect, I think the resultant installation, Csepel Bunker, is an incomplete record of the bunker that speaks of the selective partiality of perception and memory filtered by prior knowledge and experience.
Installation shot of Csepel Bunker, Labor Gallery, Budapest, 2011
