Radar Love
Two days after hurricane Kyrill I visited the Schoeppingen Hill to check damage, the storm might has left in and around the former Nike Missile Base. Halfway between Schoeppingen and the Base, I usually pass the related Radar Park, which is connected through a narrow road in a straight line north-south with the launch facility.
An unusual silence and tomblike atmosphere surrounds the Radar Control Area with its decayed buildings, strikingly vacant – but well protected through observation cams, barbed wire fences and an iron gate.
Nobody in town – not even Mr. Dillmann – could explain me the paradoxical function – or better to say dis-function of this part of the facility. Sometimes I had the feeling, they still try to keep a „secret“, nobody wants to talk about.
Passing the Radar this Sunday evening, things appeared very different. Uproaring chainsaw sounds were coming out of the facility – and from a distance I could make out the shapes of lumberjacks, cutting branches and trees, the storm seemingly has cracked. Watching this through the bars of the entrance, I suddenly could realise that the gate was ajar. Being so close to the end of my stay in Schoeppingen, I instantly grabbed the unique opportunity, opened the gate and entered the station. Being prepared to get kicked at any moment, I moved patiently but fast through the facility – trying to document as much as possible with my camera in the remaining time.
Because of the wood workers‘ noisy job, luckily the alarm was set off – and nobody noticed me. Such roaming through the facility with its peculiar tools, forfeited buildings and moss overgrown stone stairways I soon felt like joining a „live re-make“ of the legendary Myst computer game.
Accompanied by a John-Cage-like chainsaw concert, I was watching the sunset from top of the facility rampart … wondering, where all the signals of the former radar have disappeared, how far can they travel in space – and, if they might have been received or reflected somewhere lightyears from earth.
Could it be possible that the previously described „2005 Snow Disaster was consciously evoked and directed by ratiocinated signals through extraterrestrial intelligence – emulation the radar device’s only task to rotate and to scan the horizon for incoming enemy aircraft? TRACKING. TARGET. DESTROY. Or can we expect from such „intelligence“ something more sophisticated, for instance if we envision a radar based communication culture which has followed the waves‘ radiant to the sender? Maybe the rotating snow clouds were just an inverted 3D-projection of their possibilities and emotions expressed on a small spot in front of the Radar Base, forming a kiss symbolising „O“, which pulsating LOVEWAVES shattered the sky over Muensterland.