Recollections of the SNG’s Bridge in a digital installation
It is said that walls have ears, which indirectly implies that they also have mouths. After all, if they didn’t, we wouldn’t need to worry about them revealing what they’ve heard. More indirectly, it suggests that behind the walls, there is a person with ears, mouth, and eyes. This is a common personification, or anthropomorphism, where human qualities are attributed to non-human entities in the form we recognize in humans. However, we should not underestimate the value of the walls themselves in this equation. It’s not just about attaching ears to plaster, as walls are more than just an ordinary screen behind which someone can hide and eavesdrop. Where the wall is located, its age, who built it and for what purpose, its current condition, and the institution or ideology it represents—all these factors determine the person hiding behind it, and thus what the wall focuses on and listens to. The wall plays a significant role in the conversations and sounds beneath the roof it supports.
The Slovak National Gallery building and its location have undergone many radical transformations. The bridge and the wing of the building that stood before it had the opportunity to eavesdrop on these changes, words, and sounds. In the courtyard of the former water barracks, city militia, museum, and ultimately the gallery, it heard dancing couples and salon orchestras, as well as the marches of Hungarian trench soldiers. After demolishing the southern wing, the bridging structure’s walls heard that it was a jewel of Slovak architecture, just as its ears from the street often heard words like “eyesore” or “red cow.” The walls of the bridging structure surely remember the whispered words of agora, odeon, and stoa coming from the mouth of architect Vladimír Dedeček when designing the space. Last but not least, they know the hum and roar of the Danube better than anyone else, which seems to flow not only along the bridging structure but also through it.
The digital installation Heterotopia seeks to allow the bridging structure to tell how it sees itself and the world. What it has heard about itself, how the architect’s vision, history, and the aura of the place it is located have shaped it—all this has been inscribed in the walls of the bridging structure, and all this is revealed to the viewer when looking at the structure or passing through it. It represents what architecture professor Jarmila Bencová, referring to Michel Foucault, described as heterotopia and heterochrony in a compressed form. Heterotopia is a space that has more layers of meaning and relationships with its surroundings and environment than it appears at first glance. It can place several spaces side by side in one real place, several places that are in themselves incompatible. It leads us to a peculiar mixed experience, where a person is neither in one place nor another but has the potential to experience multiple places simultaneously within the same physical space. The bridging structure of the Slovak National Gallery, therefore, acts like a glance into a mirrored sphere. We look at an absolutely real space with the space that surrounds it, as well as an absolutely unreal one, creating a virtual image of the world and time around it.
It is said that walls have ears, which indirectly implies that they also have mouths. After all, if they didn’t, we wouldn’t need to worry about them revealing what they’ve heard. More indirectly, it suggests that behind the walls, there is a person with ears, mouth, and eyes. This is a common personification, or anthropomorphism, where human qualities are attributed to non-human entities in the form we recognize in humans. However, we should not underestimate the value of the walls themselves in this equation. It’s not just about attaching ears to plaster, as walls are more than just an ordinary screen behind which someone can hide and eavesdrop. Where the wall is located, its age, who built it and for what purpose, its current condition, and the institution or ideology it represents—all these factors determine the person hiding behind it, and thus what the wall focuses on and listens to. The wall plays a significant role in the conversations and sounds beneath the roof it supports.
The Slovak National Gallery building and its location have undergone many radical transformations. The bridge and the wing of the building that stood before it had the opportunity to eavesdrop on these changes, words, and sounds. In the courtyard of the former water barracks, city militia, museum, and ultimately the gallery, it heard dancing couples and salon orchestras, as well as the marches of Hungarian trench soldiers. After demolishing the southern wing, the bridging structure’s walls heard that it was a jewel of Slovak architecture, just as its ears from the street often heard words like “eyesore” or “red cow.” The walls of the bridging structure surely remember the whispered words of agora, odeon, and stoa coming from the mouth of architect Vladimír Dedeček when designing the space. Last but not least, they know the hum and roar of the Danube better than anyone else, which seems to flow not only along the bridging structure but also through it.
The digital installation Heterotopia seeks to allow the bridging structure to tell how it sees itself and the world. What it has heard about itself, how the architect’s vision, history, and the aura of the place it is located have shaped it—all this has been inscribed in the walls of the bridging structure, and all this is revealed to the viewer when looking at the structure or passing through it. It represents what architecture professor Jarmila Bencová, referring to Michel Foucault, described as heterotopia and heterochrony in a compressed form. Heterotopia is a space that has more layers of meaning and relationships with its surroundings and environment than it appears at first glance. It can place several spaces side by side in one real place, several places that are in themselves incompatible. It leads us to a peculiar mixed experience, where a person is neither in one place nor another but has the potential to experience multiple places simultaneously within the same physical space. The bridging structure of the Slovak National Gallery, therefore, acts like a glance into a mirrored sphere. We look at an absolutely real space with the space that surrounds it, as well as an absolutely unreal one, creating a virtual image of the world and time around it.
The following part is written in an informal language, and I don’t know if it will be used in this form, but during my work, I was greatly helped by the materials and guidelines from Alexandra Kusej, who was also the initiator of the installation, Miroslav Žolobanič who helped me find the right way to convey the idea to the viewer, and Branislav Horňák who provided feedback and led to better results.