Station to Station, or Art by Train(ing)
Since art has been my interest for a long time now (even if I don’t always understand it and I’m by no means an expert), I’m eager to attend any artistic event I can. As soon as I learned about the “Station to Station” project, I knew I wanted to experience it. It was described as a “happening on a train”, visiting several city across the US and serving as a “moving platform” for artistic experiments. The project has been based on a cooperation of artists, musicians and assorted creative people (call them freaks if you will). Among the artists who were supposed to take part in it were names such as Kenneth Anger, Olafur Eliasson, Charlotte Gainsbourg (after I got my ticket it turned out she won’t be coming) and – in another cities – Cat Power, Beck, as well as lots of other names unfamiliar to me.
Naive as I am, I was sure that the event will have some connection to trains, which proved not to have been the case. We went to the thing with my friend: we found a hangar (a film studio – Cine Magic Riverfront Studios) and a few tents standing around it. Inside the hangar was a concert space, but since the musicians were emitting rather undefined sounds, we left and approached the tents. They weren’t large and we were required to remove our shoes upon entering, which I gladly did – in hope of some exciting sensations (simply walking with my bare feet didn’t provide me with any). The interiors of the tents are depicted on the photos below. And even though I didn’t get their meaning entirely, I have to admit it gave me pleasure simply to be inside the white one, shot through with uncanny, hallucinogenic atmosphere. And that’s what art is all about – you don’t need to comprehend it; it’s there to intrigue you and – at least according to my definition – to make your senses come alive. My senses certainly did. They were further enlivened by the interesting people who showed up at the happening – they wore nice clothes and were at times truly fancy (Fashion Week is happening now, so they were surely heading for another party later).
