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Basalt & Asphalt This slogan, used by the Situationists on posters and graffiti during the protests of May 1968 in Paris, is both a fragment of poetry and an incitement to revolution. It is a phrase which, with elegant simplicity, evokes the tension between stasis and an underlying volatility, and broadly characterises the student-led conflicts of the late 1960s. The surreal conflation of the certainty of a paved urban roadway with the unstable footing of a wave-beaten shore also contains a promise of the unexpected hidden beneath the familiar. Thomas Crow has recognised that the cobble stones, which paved the contested streets of Paris during this turbulent time, served a symbolic function as well as being more immediately useful as missiles: Closer to home, the recent upgrade of Symonds St has reminded us on a daily basis that the ground on which we walk is subject to constant redevelopment. While perhaps not a revolution on quite as grand an ideological scale as the 1968 riots in Paris, the shifting and relaying of the roadway temporarily eroded our knowledge of where the road began and ended, which lane of traffic was supposed to go where, and where the footpath was headed. Now looking dapper in black with crisply applied white markings, Symonds St is back where it should be, but beneath the smooth tarseal the traces of disruption still remain. Finn Ferrier’s new work for Window explores the transient nature of urban roadways and structures: the seemingly immobile stone cladding of the urban jungle is crumbled, re-sited and re-formed. Perhaps with a hint of tongue-in-cheek, Ferrier presents himself as enthusiast, the rock-collector par excellence. In the manner of a historic house museum – that strange creation of heritage tourism, theatrically and perpetually a static representation of itself – Ferrier presents his collection of urban rock fragments. Lifted from the mill of the city environment, carefully labeled with collection date and location, these fragments are testament to past configurations of the city. Geography is constantly required to accommodate humanity’s bent for alterations. Sites are categorised and recategorised; the city eats itself and is remade. Any given geographical location may cycle through a bewildering array of identities over its history: volcano, military barracks, park, air-raid shelter, university, art gallery. The history of the site where Window now stands is a particularly rich one. Above ground, the sole remaining trace of the site’s most illustrious incarnation, as the location of the Albert Military Barracks, is the fragment of basalt wall running down beside the Library building. Below ground, ghostly traces left by past activity can be read by educated archaeological eyes. It was fears of an attack from the North, by Maori warriors led by Hone Heke, which led to the construction of the Barracks on the hill then known as Rangipuke. The Barracks, when built, were capable of containing practically the entire population of Auckland if necessity arose. The solid Barracks wall marked out an area of over 21 acres which quartered around 400 troops during the 1850s, and became not only a highly visible landmark of the developing town, but a focal point of Auckland’s social life. Despite originating out of the context of the New Zealand wars, the Barracks site was never called upon to fulfill its function as safe haven for the civilians of Auckland, and troops stationed there were never called into active duty. The Barracks instead became a place where troops were stationed, families lived and the community gathered in an emerging colonial town. The basalt that forms the Barracks wall was quarried from Mt Eden. Stone was transported to the Barracks site and the wall was built by Maori labourers - so solidly, that when demolition work began in the early 1870s there was some speculation about how it was going to be taken down. An article in the New Zealand Herald records an offer made by members of the Volunteer Artillery “to blow up the whole of the wall which forms the Barrack enclosure, without injury to life or property, in three days, if the authorities would find gunpowder.” Needless to say, the authorities did not accept the offer. No record exists of the eventual fate of the Barracks wall, except that the stone was re-used in building projects in the fast-growing town of Auckland. Some evidence suggests that the retaining wall fronting Kitchener Street may be made of reconstituted Barracks wall, or that the stone may have been used in railway sidings in Mechanics Bay. This recycling of urban material confuses the archaeological record. Over the last thirty years several projects have been undertaken to glean information about the history of the Barracks site through archaeological digs. In 1980, the excavation of a well in what is now Albert Park was complicated by the ground disturbance effected during World War Two, when an extensive network of tunnels was dug between Wellesley Street and Constitution Hill as an air-raid shelter for the people of Auckland. The site of the Albert Barracks was once again used as an emergency refuge for Aucklanders, and once again was never needed: the tunnels have long since been filled in, and have retreated into the realm of local urban mythology. Another excavation was carried out at 31 Princes Street in the late 1980s in an attempt to discover the location of the Barracks’ North gate and guardhouse. Prior to the construction of the University’s Kate Edgar Information Commons in 2002, a dig was performed on the site to salvage what historical data could be found. The ground retains a memory, evidence is layered in sediment. Beneath the paving-stones, a beach! A phrase picked up from the debris of history like a fragment of rock from a demolished wall becomes evidence of past attitudes. Collected pieces of the city landscape track the spatial changes of our environment, while asserting that the material of their construction remains the same.
Written by Anna Parlane
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