Page 32 - Studio International - November 1974

made. I have lived in America. I have practically Science Decade', computer techniques and and more locally emotive issues. The role of the
been an American. Now I live in Scotland by surveys had become available to the group, so artist is a useful paradigm: he is able to look
choice. Why do you think I do not still live in that 'it was possible to make the world work'. past the immediate trivia, he can look past the
America? Let us learn from their experience, What might seem arrogant or ridiculous if pragmatic. He then re-erects his own personal
let us tell the people of Scotland about it. Let spoken by someone else sounds acceptable, or set of trivia, and re-assembles clues.
us help people to realise that real change takes at least worth consideration, when stated by We can look at the early revolutionary period
place in men's hearts, not in their wallets. Let Bucky. It isn't just the rhetoric, or the seance- in Russia, it used theatre, just as did Theatre 784,
us see this change expressed in our choice of like re-education. It (for me) has something to but we need to be more readily nomadic, and
objectives, in our priorities, and in our ideals. do with the non-mystic achievement of the man: accept mixed employment as well as mixed
Scotland may have more money now; but it is he has demonstrated so many times during his economies and mixed technologies. Perhaps
a test, not a bonus. If money is to become career that he can design-out problems. He does there is a clue if one looks back into the history
more common, then let it, according to those think comprehensively and calculate accurately: of Scottish clans? And, because they are
old laws of scarcity and abundance, decline in and we need only be moderately optimistic in unfashionable, we should not ignore the men
importance.' presuming that he is correct in this instance. who won the West or the Victorian opportunists:
[1] Book of Isaiah. On the second day, after Beuys's `seminal who were both very good at inventing their way
[2] 'Where the Wasteland Ends — Politics and session', we returned to the local scale, with a out of problems.
transcendence in the Post-Industrial Society' by
platform largely drawn from known preponents The paths of the exploitation of oil need not
Theodore Roszak.
of natural resource technology, the Conservative be consistent. We must look at the way in
Party and Edinburgh University Department of which Scotland is farmed, and even if another
To the outside observer, one very noticeable Economics. Cedric Price was very quiet: he 5,000 square miles (out of a total of over
characteristic of the Scottish speakers was an welcomed the fragility of the situation and 30,000) could be rationally cultivated, this
air of pulpit oratory: somehow, both politicians hoped that in design terms that this fragility would be another 1/10 of a square mile per
and a succession of political reverends moved might be interpreted in the creation of person in Scotland. The lochs could be
progressively towards the idea of goodness, we indeterminate industrial methods and intensively fish-farmed. We could take a leaf
heard that `to be parochial is good, parasites indeterminate environments. out of Victor Papanek's book. A vision (not
are bad', we heard of 'freedom', 'success', To the third day, by which time the audience entirely ironic) of 'Adhesive-backed moss,
`failure' and 'oppression'. But between such had settled down to an average of forty. It clinging to an oil-based plastic sheeting over the
emotive stuff, we had enlightenment .... for became clear that much Pan-Scottish hollowed-out foundations of a 19th-century
instance (from the Reverend Ian McKenzie), skulduggery was at work: we heard from a croft powered by a Heath Robinson chain of
`The oil people say: get rich and the anti-oil Scottish TUC official and from a rig-worker 18 appliances — all of them wind-powered, but
people say: keep away. We need well-informed who exposed the total lack of comprehension with this power 20% above optimum efficiency
parochial people, but we also need technology of the real terror of conditions on the rigs by due to good oiling, and therefore low friction'.
and entrepreneurship.' Speaker after speaker the TUC. The five oil outlets could (conceptually) feed
reinforced the evidence that various In the end, Dave Angus, the more articulate five differing pipelines. Perhaps run
machiavellian moves were afoot: the decisions of the two architectural students, felt that simultaneously on a comparative basis: Line 1
to build oil rigs at Drumbui rather than at there had been 'too much philosophy', but secret, camouflaged, with occasional outflow
Glasgow was in order to obviate union activism, Ricky Demarco felt that it had been 'a pathetic points of very small scale. Programmed to last
in other words to use geography as a political attempt to put something together' ... was 100 years. Modest. The conversion plant
tool. After a morning of this Bucky was happy that `songs had been sung' ... and thanked hidden in the bed of a large loch. (Loch Ness?)
refreshing: he came into a (by now) crowded the audience for 'bearing with the suffering'. The cooling apparatus hidden here also. Line 2
Poorhouse, older and frailer than in the days of the oil taken directly to an underground oil
the five and six hour marathons of the fifties Footnote reservoir: a `liquid Fort Knox', strategically
and sixties. But once he had embarked on a My own text for the conference came near the placed: an insurance for the future. Collateral
characteristically ebullient teach-in, full of end, in so doing it formed in part a series of rather than substance? Line 3 a line threaded
voice and enthusiasm, he seemed miraculously proposals, and in part a critique of the other through a fairly long stretch of territory, but
to gain in vigour. He took us back to eternal speakers: In a Black and White Oil Show, we shorter than (1). With experimental plant,
principles of movement, calculation, and can feel the deliberate polarities: Capitalists = allowed to be malfunctioning if necessary to the
relativity, to Copernicus, and to some of his Black, Community Socialists = White or (from experimental nature of the plant. Plastics works
own emancipatory notions: 'Every man is the Conservative speaker) Hairies/Beatniks/ in old factories, conversion units in old barns or
born a Duke ..."We are born to be Community Socialists = Black, Good useful shipyards. Experiments with oil-based
comprehensive but forced (by society?) into chaps = White or High Technology = Black, fertilisers, oil-based food. The labour mobile
becoming specialist' ... He moved, Low Technology = White. I want to suggest as
and ready for anything. An open laboratory.
imperceptibly towards his final stage of an alternative a misty, but speckled approach
Line 4 Conventional. A bloody great refinery,
optimism. `One thing common to all of history to the problem.
all pipes and lights, at Dundee, or somewhere
is problems, problems, problems: We are here The conference illustrates a tradition of
else at the centre of population. As Gerald
on the world as problem solvers' 'When piety (Bible thumping in manner; moralistic,
Laing said, 'a lot of people like the goings-on of
I was a child, people were nice to me, but they good and bad, in matter). It also illustrates a
the city." Line 5 Straight to the jetty. For
were ignorant of the world' .... `it costs tradition of heroics: with Bucky and Beuys as
world distribution, a few dollars a barrel
$1,000,000 to make a gallon of oil (speaking in the heroes, perhaps. Pluralism was often called
cheaper: don't be `little Scotlander' about it.
total terms) .... 'the design of hunger is a very for, but it runs counter to the traditions of
Undercut the Arabs and send it only to the
amazing piece of design.' .... `Politics is Bible thumping and piety. We need a truly
Third World: to those who need it. These five
delegating someone else to do something about pluralist approach in order to grapple at all with
competitive models are deliberately pluralist:
it' .... Then came the punchline: 'It is feasible the Scottish oil problem: and there are clues.
and can be interpreted as both symbols of such
to recycle matter for the whole (world) Buckminster Fuller was able to throw at us a
an approach and as planning proposals of the
community by 1985' It emerged that since the `scatter' of ideas, each complementary to the
traditional kind.
commencement of the programme (by Fuller other, but essentially growing from one another.
In the widest sense: historically, politically,
[1]
and his associates) known as the 'World Design It is necessary to look beyond the more obvious organizationally.
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