The Mediakcije Collection

Marc Augé: In Praise of the Bicycle

It’s as if Slovenia in the last year turned around the cycling pedals: in the first wave of the pandemic, the cities turned into ghost towns crossed by bicycles carrying food and their exhausted and underpaid delivery people. For a few days, Slovenia was dressed in yellow after a double victory of Slovenian cyclists (competing for clubs that have nothing to do with Slovenia) at the Tour de France. A violent breaking in the former Rog bicycle factory that has become a “factory” of a different (solidary, emphatic, horizontal, engaged, etc.) sociality in the past decade buried the last illusions of Ljubljana being an open, tolerant, cosmopolitan capital. And after a few weeks of the pandemic, the bicycle became “a weapon brandished by thousands all across Slovenia”. The bicycle gained a completely new social dimension: it became a tool of a general revolt against the authoritarian measures of the government. The latter forbade people to gather and socialise on public spaces and in public areas but could not stop a group movement of people. On Friday protests, cyclers didn’t only discover the city but also the social and political power of a free (cycling) movement. With “the power of calves”, as Augé puts it, they made new social connections and took to the fight for the accessibility of public space.