re-introduction
If you ask me why VIADUCT has been on hiatus for upwards of three years now, I’m sure you already know the answer. It’d be as disingenuous as if I ignored COVID or pretended not to know how bad things are and asked you, “Tell me, what has been going on since we’ve been away?”
Rent & food & gasoline prices have gorged themselves on our desperation, children have grown to know only sickness or quarantine, and the american empire has ground its teeth in dysfunctional rhythm. Western colonial capitalism falls slow, despite the broadest military, carceral, and policing bodies the world has ever seen. It drags down as much as possible with itself.
VIADUCT sat dormant much longer than I hoped when I let things peter out back in 2019. I’m pleased to announce that we’re functioning again. We have new capacities and motivations, interests and even new editors (thanks, Em!) which will take us in new directions. A brief re-introduction seems necessary. To illustrate the sentiment we hope to encourage in each other through VIADUCT, I’d like to turn towards what I’m currently reading (alongside my insightful friends and co-editors). In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon writes,
“If the building of a bridge does not enrich the consciousness of those working on it, then don’t build the bridge, and let the citizens continue to swim across the river or use a ferry. The bridge must not be pitchforked or foisted upon the social landscape by a deus ex machina, but, on the contrary, must be a product of the citizens’ brains and muscles. And there is no doubt architects and engineers, foreigners for the most part, will probably be needed, but the local party leaders must see to it that the techniques seep into the desert of the citizens’ brain so that the bridge in its entirety and in every detail can be integrated, redesigned, and reappropriated. The citizen must appropriate the bridge. Then, and only then, is everything possible.”
The material conditions of the citizens and infrastructure here in the death-rattling imperial core do not fit Fanon’s analysis of a colony, but this excerpt may still feel familiar to us. VIADUCT, after all, was named after the Alaskan Way Viaduct, an old highway crumbling over Seattle which was demolished the same year we went on hiatus. The Viaduct’s construction, maintenance (or lack thereof), and demolition were all foisted upon the social landscape, along with the whole infrastructure of our city and state in this colony. They were not built to benefit the people or be understood by the people. Rather, they facilitate the production of capital and the transportation of military and police personnel. Here, we must reappropriate not only the bridge but its demolition. If we can help seep the techniques and purposes of demolishing the empire’s infrastructure into each others’ brains, then here too, new things may be possible.
- Sasha :^)