Post-Military Cinema: Beatriz Santiago Muñoz @ Transmission Gallery

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz returns to Glasgow with Post-Military Cinema, part of Glasgow International Festival 2014. Her latest work is an anthropological investigation of an abandoned U.S. naval base Roosevelts Roads in the coastal town of Ceiba, Puerto Rico.

Three short films give tacit glimpses into the nature and pace of life in Ceiba (human, animal, plant and elemental) as it gradually reclaims the derelict buildings, defunct military installations and surrounding lands and sea. This is an uncanny, alien paradise; iguanas sunbathing on the bottom of a vacant, waterless pool, complete with empty tunnels and painted black crosses, bats flying around an abandoned cinema, rusted gates and crumbling concrete play host to ants and spiders constructing around them and budding cotton trees.

These structures are mysterious and incongruous out of the context of industrial, military life; and both local people and nature seem to be making a stealthy, yet benign reclamation of formerly occupied territory. The uneasy tranquillity is palpable and its precarious nature becomes increasingly apparent when the sublime, natural images are seen within context of Cieba’s troubled past. Established during WWII, the naval base was subject to bombings and later, during the Cold War, became a place of military exercises and weapon testing. Its founding caused the displacement of native peoples and reported ill health effects such as increased cancer rates among the locals who stayed and serviced the naval base, accidental deaths from stray bombs and incarceration for Puerto Ricans who protested the U.S. military presence.

America’s bloody imperialism subtly haunts the films, through the ruinous industrial architecture, local religious iconography and the prayers of displaced people. A vinyl recording of the soundscape of Faslane, a Scottish military base, gives a timely, uneasy comparison between occupied Cieba and Scotland, on the eve of a vote on Scottish independence. [Rachel Bowles]