Looking North Through Art - Dr Anne Daffersthofer

Looking North invited artists whose work engages critically with these concepts, encouraging reflection on the framings, expectations, and realities of the Scottish landscape and our relationship to it. Captured in black and white, Boyd’s photographic series Tir an Airm presents perspectives onto a landscape which not many people have traversed. They reveal the vastness of the Hebridean weapons range that is part of the Ministry of Defence’s estate – a location that brings to the forefront many questions, contradictions and dilemmas of our time.

The unique energy of the place seems heightened by the brutal contrasts of beauty and destruction, nowhere more obvious than in one of the innumerable craters which Boyd’s photography reveals. Using drone imagery, he is able to transcend physical and topographical restrictions which render much of the military estate inaccessible to those on foot. The craters are remnants of some of the most destructive uses of energy humankind has developed. Those energies significantly directed the course of the twentieth century, enabling unprecedented levels of violence which shaped landscapes and their inhabitants. This anthropogenic fingerprint links the perforated landscape in Tir an Airm with its cousins across the world. In Europe, one’s mind may wander to the trenches and craters in Normandy, or even the forever-altered area around Chernobyl. Despite their differences, they are all manifestations of energies humankind have harnessed since the Industrial Revolution, and whose complex and wide-reaching effects can exceed our existence, and perhaps even our imagination.

In addition to the visible imprint on the landscape, long-lasting ecological changes follow bombardment. While Tir an Airm unveils ghosts of previous conflicts, it also links to current ones. In wake of the Ukraine war, NATO has been using the Outer Hebrides for large-scale military exercises and training. In Ukraine heavy metals and chemicals pollute air, water, land and soil, and the lives of both humans and non-humans are impacted significantly, leading to the abandonment of sites, decreased air, water and soil quality, and resultingly lower biodiversity production. The Ukraine war and particularly the destruction of the Kakhova Dam in June 2023 tragically brought the environmental cost of war to the forefront of public consciousness (e.g. the articles published by the UNEP and Emergence Magazine).

In Boyd’s photography, one detects shapes that look like dark circles from afar.  The violence that preceded them feels abstract; that moment at which each circle emerged, following an explosion that catapulted intricate ecosystems up in the air, as pre-existing structures burst and animals, plants, and soil were blown up. Traces of past centuries suddenly exposed to particles, oxygen, and pollution of this present moment, the so-called Anthropocene. The age of man. In these moments timelines collide, opening a window into deep, geologic time, encouraging a moment to reflect and reframe.

Over time, the stillness which follows that destructive burst of energy renders each crater into a site of ecological transformation. In his Looking North talk, Boyd mentions the MoD’s sustainability magazine Sanctuary that is dedicated to highlighting their conservation initiatives. It conveys a strong sense of the MoD’s interest in drawing connecting lines between their activities and the potential for ecological conservation. This is partially due to much of their estate being protected from conventional development, providing conditions for ecosystems and biodiversity to thrive (e.g. “Demolitions + Amphibians = Population Explosion”) . The link between the destruction and negative impacts of anthropocentric landscapes turning into biodiversity havens has some parallels in floating oceanic plastic debris. Research has shown that a wide variety organisms can be found on much of the plastic floating in the world’s oceans. Yet this does not legitimise continued pollution. We understand it as overwhelmingly more destructive to existing ecosystems than can be balanced out by the construction of these new habitats. And in that, one may find a hint of sarcasm to be inherent to the MoD’s statement; repeated bombardment and environmental destruction is a constant companion to creating more craters than can “turn into habitats”. Boyd brings this tension to light, not just by showing marks of the environmental destruction invoked by military drills, but also in those images which show abandoned military equipment within the Hebridean landscape. They are time capsules – reminders of armed conflicts, pointing to past, present and future alike. They symbolise the discrepancy between expectation and reality; things, or put differently, uses of energies we silently accept and allow to happen as long as they are out of sight.

That is why military tests of that kind are outsourced to places the majority considers remote. That same “remoteness”, however, attracts not just the military, but also tourists escaping the mainland and its unforgivingly busy pace. To appeal to visitors, the tourism industry likes to idealise “remote” places as “the perfect escape”. The notion of remoteness often ties in with being difficult to reach from the centre, and so the journey to that escapist destination and the effort required, for example by taking a plane, a ferry or driving by car, directly relates to discourses on energy in the context of transport.

You can read the full article with images here.