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6: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRON CURTAIN
order or structure. In this way, for example, I could have demonstrated
several ways in which communism and its oppression trickles through the
many layers of people and objects all the way down to the barbed wire still
present in Čižov. Instead I have taken ANT as an inspiration in the way I
am turning, firstly, to the materials themselves and letting them and the
connections between them and the people involved with them guide me
towards an understanding of their whole and to see them as building blocks
that together may, or may not, create a larger network.
Yaneva demonstrate two methodological approaches to material culture
in her case study of an entertainment complex (Yaneva 2013). She does this
through the eyes of the ‘hasty sightseer’ and the ‘slow sightseer’, the first of
which, through hurrying through the ethnographical fieldwork only has
time to gain an impression of the material and reproduce concepts of
society and culture rather than, the second who through a slower
methodology can understand the material through experiencing it (Yaneva
2013:11). She writes: “ANT gives us one more tool, with which to follow the
painstaking ways humans interact with objects and environments, and
shape dynamic contemporary cultures at different scales” (Yaneva 2013:25).
I have already mentioned how the fence and the watchtower in the
village of Čižov demands attention, and they really do. It was images of
these that drew my attention to this location in the first place. When I first
saw these pictures on the internet I thought this tower and the fence
represented the dark past of the Iron Curtain in an acute way. I had that
with me when I arrived here. Yet when I climbed up the watchtower, and
got over my initial dizziness of the distance between me and the ground, I
was taken by the beautiful view across the park and down towards the valley
of the Dyji River. I wondered how much this landscape had changed over
the last few centuries. I wondered if the border guards enjoyed the view
during their shifts up here. Early one morning as I walked along the fence
the sun started pushing through the moody looking clouds and I took
several pictures capturing the dark clouds, the sun slightly against the lens
of my camera and the barbed wire almost glistening in the sun’s rays. At
this moment the fence was almost beautiful (Figure 101).
My preconceptions tell me that I am not allowed to think such a thing at
all. This is a monument that lifts the memory of people killed trying to cross
it, it is a witness of oppression, it is a testament of a divided Europe, a
symbol of the Cold War. But I find that this is not enough. I find that the
material has more to say. The watchtowers were prefabricated in a factory
and transported to the site to be assembled here, the material to these
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