The Indifference Engine

The final installment of the series... SINGULAR PLEASURES 6 The 1997 Caravan and Camping Exposition It is curious just how persistently an outdated ethos can linger. In the latter part of the 19th century, the Romantic conception of Nature as a state of mythical innocence, where we might draw spiritual nourishment from the evidence of God's handiwork, was supplanted by an imperialistic ethos. The untamed wilderness was something to be conquered and exploited, and it is this increasingly archaic vision that informs the 1997 Caravan and Camping Exposition. Barbarously contracted to "Campex 97", it carries echoes of the Great Exhibitions of the Victorian era, further entrenching its implicit industrial expansionist sensibility. How are we to view a construction like the Mallard "Rolling Thunder" 6-berth air-conditioned Mobile Townhouse with internal bathroomette, satellite dish and self-erecting annexe? What subtext does it reveal? The answers must...