Avery Review Dissertation Prize 2026
Mythical Infrastructure: The Strait of Messina Bridge
Sofia Rudi Kent, MARA
The myth of Colapesce is more than a fable from the Strait of Messina. It is the site where infrastructure, political power, and collective imaginaries meet, revealing myth to be rooted in material places and histories. Cola names a condition in which projected futures become active forces in shaping the present. His figure illuminates the logic of speculative infrastructure: projects sustained through expectations of future completion, even as their realization remains uncertain. Oscillating between materiality and narrative, myth stabilizes political arrangements by presenting them as necessary and self-evident, while simultaneously reconfiguring social and spatial worlds. What follows is a story of an innominate bridge, pedestrianly referred to as The Bridge over the Strait of Messina, and it traces one such configuration.
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The myth of Colapesce is more than a fable from the Strait of Messina. It is the site where infrastructure, political power, and collective imaginaries meet, revealing myth to be rooted in material places and histories. Cola names a condition in which projected futures become active forces in shaping the present. His figure illuminates the logic of speculative infrastructure: projects sustained through expectations of future completion, even as their realization remains uncertain. Oscillating between materiality and narrative, myth stabilizes political arrangements by presenting them as necessary and self-evident, while simultaneously reconfiguring social and spatial worlds. What follows is a story of an innominate bridge, pedestrianly referred to as The Bridge over the Strait of Messina, and it traces one such configuration.
Download PDF here