Field Season One: May 2025
Field Report Notice
The Bureau of Operational Landscapes circulates field reports as temporary dispatches. Each season is published for a limited duration and then withdrawn. This archive consolidates those materials as part of an ongoing record of infrastructural sites and public encounters.
Field Season 1 took place in Trenčín, Slovakia from May 17—31, 2025 and comprises 14 field reports. The visit functioned as an initial survey of the disused industrial rail bridge and its surrounding terrain. The reports document first observations, site walks, and preliminary photographic work undertaken during that period.
May 31, 2025
I was thinking how to end this thing, but yesterday’s dispatch proved to be worthy of a fitting conclusion. So beyond a few cursory words, this will be it. All I can really offer is a thank you for your curiosity and going with me on this newslettering journey, despite its meanderings and at times complete haphazard dispatches.
What would a trip to Slovakia be without a Kofola in a giant mug (I stole one).
Writing is a kind of stone carving, a way to solidify thought into durable form. It is an act that materializes the ephemeral and gives it weight. Kind of a paradox, then, as the original point of this newsletter was for its precise non-durability, its scheduled demise as a form of anti-fixing. But then I have also learned on this research trip that, like Forrest Gump once said, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what yer gonna get.
Slovakia-flavoured chips: salty (and sassy)!
Today is May 31. Like I said in the first Field Report, this date signals the end of the experiment. It was only ever meant to be temporary, akin to a local radio station that comes into tune and just as quickly dissipates into the ether. But I will be back in Slovakia working on the next phase of this project in September. You can always tune in then.
In the meantime, these posts will be archived, and you will be deleted.