The politics of vibrant matter: Consistency, containment and the concrete of Mussolini’s bunker

Abstract

This article explores the idea of how vibrancy can be produced. Specifically, the attempt is to investigate the multiplicities of vibrancy by considering one of Mussolini's bunkers. The author examines the location of the bunker in the EUR (Esposizione Universale Romana) neighbourhood in Rome, the bunker's materiality, and the context and social meaning of the bunker through a contemporary art exhibition called 'Confronti' (Confrontations) that took place in the bunker in 2009. The article argues that while emphasizing matter's inherent vibrancy may be useful in some cases, there is also merit in further unpacking the ways in which vibrancy is produced. In this example, the concrete bunker expresses vibrancy through the processes involved in the emergent material form, and in the sustained politics and social considerations embedded in valuing tangible urban heritage.

The Bunker’s After-Life: Cultural Production in the Ruins of the Cold War

“…It seems unlikely that Lotringer means us to take his statement literally (i.e. that the bunker itself somehow holds memories of the war independent of its human interlocutors), and Bartolini (2015) has recently argued persuasively against suggestions that bunkers themselves have a historical and/or militaristic essence which they store and transmit independent of the projections and inferences of particular visitors.…”

The Devotions of Restoration: Materiality, Enthusiasm, and Making Three “Indian Motocycles” Like New

“…As Bartolini (2015) has shown, however, overfocus on materiality still risks losing touch with the ways in which things are socially constructed and culturally embedded: "By pushing to the side the social life of objects to emphasize inherent vibrancy . .…”

Opening the bunker: Function, materiality, temporality

“…Whilst some have read the bunker as a site of psychological and affective preparedness for war and annihilation (Masco, 2009), others have explored it as an ambivalent space and a waste of modernity (Beck, 2011). Others again have unpacked it as a space of exceptionality and biopolitics (Klinke, 2018), probed the bunker's physical properties (Bartolini, 2015) and teased out the logics of re-appropriation, domestication and de-territorialization that some bunkers invite, for bunkers compose, de-and recompose preparedness (Berger Ziauddin, 2017;Deville et al, 2014). Finally, a growing strand of work has examined the bunker via notions of ruination and meaning-making through exploration (Bennett, 2011a(Bennett, , 2011b(Bennett, , 2017aGarrett, 2013) and offered artistic engagement with these space (Sandys, 2017;Wilson, 2017).…”