Field Season One: May 2025

May 30, 2025

I am at the end of this trip. I am also at the end of my ability to function. But this is a positive, it’s a sign that I was active, and insinuated myself into the urban fabric and community. An excellent network of co-collaborators and conspirators is starting to form, and without their help I’d probably just be staring at that damn bridge everyday (well, I still do this but now I seem to have some intentionality with this gazing).1

What I love about being in the midst of a photographic project (an ‘artistic’ project?) are the weird incidents and odd observations that happen everyday. It’s probably because my senses are heightened, and I am much more present in the space than I am back home, where, I think, we tend to drift into the shadows, operating on the edges of vision and sensitivity as the place and people around us is so familiar.

Wanted to get closer but a guy in Jaguar had other ideas.

Today, for example, I was walking back to the flat I am staying at and a young couple timidly approached. At first they spoke Slovak, but, I learned my lesson from yesterday’s incident and decided just to say I do not understand: do you speak English? Indeed they were happy to practice. The young man said he had seen me around town in my Bureau-issued orange jacket, and he was hoping to see me again and chat because “I look artistic.” Flattered, I carried on my way, and thought to myself: I am artistic!

It’s not much more than that, but I was pleased at his compliment and that set me in a nice mood.

Alexander the architect also delivered some nice news to me today. If you recall from Field Report #10, I half-jokingly stated I wanted to start a committee, something like the Interdisciplinary Council for the Rebranding of Load-Bearing Icons to name the four bridges other than what they are now: as a reminder, there’s the new rail bridge, the old rail bridge, the car or road bridge, and then the other car or road bridge that’s newer.

Photo Editors: always up to no good. I definitely understand what they were saying here with this photo selection: look how crappy the bridge ism why does it need a name!

Anyway, this was posted to Facebook (thanks, Andrej) and soon it took off, with local citizens all jumping in with their myriad of ideas and suggestions. This post was then picked up by the local news outlet, and proves that indeed, these bridges really do need names! So, when I come back in the fall, one of my tasks will be to initiate the Interdisciplinary Council for the Rebranding of Load-Bearing Icons and work with citizens to solicit and then choose names, make some plaques, and install them on these soon-to-be-named bridges. Exciting!

I was going to tell you about the weird chess pawn-shaped hieroglyphs on the roof of the power plant, or the stories of communist-era beheaded statues, or the secret room in Trenčín’s hexagon-shaped theatre and cultural centre, or the band that is comprised of the mayor, the city architect, the leading gynaecologist, and the founder of the Pohoda Festival, that also was a leading group that helped dismantle the Iron Curtain in the late 80s, but just now the church bells have started their random blasting (I type this at 15:56 local time; there never seems to be a specific time for those bells to ring) and in somewhat discordant unison, a man and a woman are chatting through a loudspeaker, this weirdly omnipotent set of voices babbling about something, so loud that their voices must carry across the whole city.

And now they have stopped. The bells, the voices. It is silent. There are only a few birds chirping. A police siren wails in the distance.

And I’ve run out of steam.

I want to give a shout out to Jana, The Brothers Zovineč™ (this is my name for them), Duśan, Andrej, Alexander, Tomaš, Lukasz, Štefan, Juraj, and of course Emma and the crew at ECOC and everyone else I have met these past two weeks. See you in the Fall.