Louise Forbes has been wheeling around the large empty factory site with a scooter.
You can hear its sound thrown in weird ways through the enormous open space when she moves. As the Exhibition Install Lead for Dundee Design Festival 2024, Louise has been preparing the space ahead of the opening.
As the work goes on, she can see the remnants of the site’s previous lives. ‘When we painted the floor recently there were lots of bits where you could tell machinery had been. I had fun imagining the factory in full swing.‘
In a sense, every place that has been important to a community for decades is haunted by its past lives. The term ‘ghost in the machine’ was first introduced by philosopher Gilbert Ryle as a critique of Descartes’ argument about the relationship between body and mind. But the turn of phrase has been popularised to describe something spookier: from literal ghost stories to sci-fi explorations of AI and the consciousness of robots.
It speaks to a common human experience of finding an intangible awareness imbued into the materials and spaces with which we build. We are often haunted, not by literal ghosts but by the slowly fading experiences of the past.
The Michelin Tyre Factory in Dundee had a life prior to the festival. Opened in 1971, it soon became an essential industry in the city. The scale of its production was incredible, at times producing twenty-four thousand tyres a day.
During its lifespan, many people passed through it. One of them was Dave Wright. He joined Michelin as an apprentice in 1976, when he was a teenager. The first few years were spent getting a solid experience in all of the different departments.
Dave’s first role after that learning period was in the curing workshop (vulcanising), ‘You’ve got hot water, you’ve got steam, you’ve got hydraulics, you’ve got compressed air, cold water, vacuum, and then noise and heat.
You know, it was a complicated place to be.’
‘The wrong move, and you will get burnt…’ He says with a wry smile remembering his youth, ‘It was great!’ The factory was a busy, bustling and incredibly noisy place. The production kept growing and so did Dave’s enthusiasm.
After a few years, Michelin started a 24/7 working pattern. ‘It’s like aeroplanes. They fly nonstop. They just change the crew.’ The demand was massive, they couldn’t make too many tyres. Dave was on the very first shift of the new 24-hour pattern.
His role changed with time and he eventually started working as Project Engineer. He was driven, ‘I had an appetite, I would say, an enthusiasm.’ He saw the site change over the years, including the arrival of the first computers.
In 2020 the factory closure was announced and hundreds of jobs were put on the line. But as well as the specific loss of employment, there was suddenly an empty space where good work opportunities used to be.
UNITE’s statement at the time read: ‘It is the end of an era for Dundee. For 50 years the plant has provided highly-skilled jobs for thousands of people and it has been a major landmark in our city.’
Dave was a testament to its impact, ‘Michelin was taking these young guys and making them engineers.’ At the age of fifty-eight, he considered what could possibly come next.