Field Report #5

A bridge with no-name

Yesterday there was a small outdoor photo exhibition about the city. In one small image, relegated to a far corner of the display, there was a black and white photograph of an iron rail bridge with Nazis marching across. I don’t know from what side of the river they were thumping their boots towards, but it probably doesn’t matter.

I asked around about this moment: is the current bridge spanning the Váh the same bridge those Nazis crossed?

I was mostly met with shrugged shoulders. Many had no clue. Most couldn’t even name the bridge. I still don’t know what its called, other than “the bridge that once existed but now is closed due to construction and making me re-route my path home by adding extra unnecessary minutes out of the way.”

I feel their pain. The house I am staying at is also on the ‘that’ side of the river, making me question if I really need to cross it or not.

But this makes me consider this bridge as a different kind of infrastructure, not just as a technical system but rather, more importantly, a cultural form, sharing how we live, sense and imagine this world of Trenčín. I, too, am slightly annoyed at the diversion, this “communication channel” has been re-routed to not be amenable to everyday life.

Infrastructure structures affect, our desires, and the aesthetic experience of how we navigate and move through modern life. They are as much as air and blood and sweat, parts of the body that exist as much as this bridge spans a divide and gets you home faster.

So in a sense I am not surprised by the lack of knowledge of this bridge, it has been naturalized into society as an inevitability, until now, when it’s not.

I decide to sit down by the riverbank (on the convenient side, of course) and draw this bridge. Where does it connect, and how? What surrounds it and how does it integrate into the urban fabric? How is it more than just iron and steel, but a vital organ that mediates life?

Anyway. Here is a drawing.