The five lightboxes in Trenčín’s underground passage are Austrian artist Oliver Ressler’s contribution to Green Line, part of European Capital of Culture Trenčín 2026, curated by Oto Hudec. The underpass linking the old town to the river is a typical piece of car-centric infrastructure: a dim tunnel pushing pedestrians below ground so vehicles can move freely above. With stairs only, it excludes the elderly and wheelchair users. While the most polluting and noisy mode of transport dominates city space under open sky, pedestrians are confined to unsafe underground corridors. Built in the 1980s under a notionally classless society, such architecture now separates those forced below from those flowing freely overhead.
Barrier-tape slogans in the photographs invoke resistance: “Act as if it were possible to radically transform the world,” quoting Angela Davis, and “Under their wheels but unbroken,” recalling both car dominance and the medieval Breaking Wheel.
Out of the Passage to Seize Back the Sky calls for reclaiming the right to move without fear of traffic, confronting private car ownership as a global climate and public-health catastrophe demanding urgent change.
