Invasive materialities: War bunkers as disturbing nodes of collaboration

Abstract

This article discusses the qualities and affordances of the remaining World War II bunkers still found along Europe's Western coastline. Drawing on ethnographic and historical material from a Danish section of the line, and on my involvement in establishing an alternative film festival among these ruins, I explore the bunkers as ‘invasive’ materialities, that is, externally imposed structures, still conceived in various ways as foreign, intrusive or out of place. The bunkers continue to disturb the status quo, prompting different kinds of responses – of opposition and consternation but also certain kinds of allure and fascination. With the film festival as the main case, I trace the bunkers as products of various kinds of collaboration and as natural-cultural amalgams around which questions of protection, ownership, and rights come to matter, socially and materially. I argue that an ‘invasive’ analytics may further our understanding of the different relationships and agencies involved in these dynamics.