Újraírt tér-képek 1.
Redrawn Spaces and Maps I.

The Gabčíkovo Waterworks and the "New Danube" from the Point of View of Locals

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines, from the perspective of the local inhabitants, the consequences of the landscape transformation associated with the construction of the Gabčíkovo hydroelectric power plant and with the diversion of the Danube River. There was embedded a static water reservoir and a drainage unit of a rigid shape into the constantly changing, mosaic-like landscape of the former delta of the river on the Rye Island. Its story is about the headway of the central power and of the control over the local worlds. The reservoir and the outlet channel rise as a kind of boundary across the landscape, differentiating the adjacent municipalities according to what actually separates whom from something on its one side or the other. The tear has been suffered not only in the physical sense but the river´s shape has also torn in two: in the Old Danube and the New Danube. Ruptures emerged in the landscape, and, subsequently, in the social relationships too, as the formerly joint municipalities were cut off, and, contrarily, those never constituting a unit, now became connected—a new natural geographical unit has been created between the Old Danube and the outlet channel, an island that has never existed before: the Small Rye Island. The external costs of the investment have been passed on to the local landscape and the local people. Those residing at the place bear various scars and injustices, only a part of which become verbalized. This study records and analyzes recollections and attitudes of the locals, from the first news about the power plant through its construction, and its consequences lasting until the present day.

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