{ infrastructure }
If we accept the traditional saying that all roads lead to Rome, do we need to question who built them and why?
To deal with infrastructure is to question the very neutrality of the medium. How do infrastructural projects relate to coloniality and imperialism, and how are they commonly perceived? If we acknowledge infrastructure is the premise upon which the myth of ‘Western civilisation’ is built, we should take a closer look at the symbolic and mythological meanings assigned to infrastructure in order to explore politics, industry and economy hiding behind the myth.
We call upon the profanation of infrastructure and the civilization it generates. It is needed to question the heritage of so called western civilization – a series of logistical and infrastructural objects built for extraction of goods, transportation of cargo and people and a series of institutions that enabled the colonial apparatus to install its power and supremacy in the distant territories far away from the colonial centres. The very same objects and networks that are used to justify the modernization process and the culture that brought it, and finally, to establish a silent superiority through the medium of infrastructure.
The heritage we are dealing with here is rather a set of relations hidden behind the less visible, but permanent infrastructure which is consistently neglected and which asks the question – does dealing within the frames of the strictly defined ‘cultural heritage’ very efficiently hides the heritage of colonial relationships that persist today? How do we interpret new investments in the name of aid to development and how do we read them with critical eyes?
To deconstruct the frames that limit the visibility of actual politics, we want to question the way that definitions of heritage are commonly used to create new power relations with the European centres of capital.
The very centers where the culture and civilization is conceptualized and molded at universities and other educational institutions and being actively used to justify the new order of power relations.
