Suzanne Treister
2009

MTB [MILITARY TRAINING BASE]


MTB
consists of designs for a military training base of the future.

Such facilities generally house military equipment and personnel, and are the sites of training and operations. Bases are usually extra-legal jurisdictions not subject to civil law. They can range from small outposts to military cities containing up to 100,000 people and may belong to a different nation or state than the surrounding territory.

MTB draws in part on the methodology of the role playing simulated architectural/landscaped war zone as a military training ground, eg. the Mojave Viper Training Program located in the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, CA, USA, where simulations of Iraq and Afghanistan are built to resemble the originals.

MTB also references the idealistic theories and proposals for non-lethal warfare of Jim Channon and the 'First Earth Battalion'. Channon's book of the same name was self-published in 1979, also in California. Channon is a Vietnam veteran who has worked as a futurologist and educational technologist for the U.S. Army, however some of his proposals have been perverted by the military, for example his ideas to utilise music to create positive vibrations were instead developed into a psychological weapon of torture.

MTB draws together a web of histories and projections for the future, suggesting hypothetical scenarios for alternative military training.


MTB essay by Richard Grayson



Images above from inatallation at Alma Enterprises, London, November/December 2009

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