The Slow Line: Art Through Train Travel and Public Transit Spaces

About

A site-based class turning trains, stations, and movement into artistic material. Through fieldwork, theory, and public encounters, participants create works for a final exhibition at railway stations

The Slow Line invites participants to explore how artistic practice can expand beyond institutional frameworks into public space, mobility, and actual travel experience. Set in and around railway stations in Berlin and Brandenburg, the class turns travel, waiting, and the rhythms of movement into inspiration for artistic practices. It culminates in a public exhibition at stations and light-based interventions in a historic tower, visible to commuters and passing trains.

The theme ENOUGH acts as critique and invitation: enough of institutional hierarchies, closed selection systems, and sterile white cubes. Instead, we shift the focus toward artistic work that grows from travel experience and direct engagement with the public realm. Participants develop site-responsive works on platforms, trains, and inside dormant railway structures, addressing the social, poetic, and ecological dimensions of travel.

Train journeys function as both method and metaphor: slow, collective movement as an alternative to acceleration, and as a gesture toward sustainability in times of climate urgency. The train becomes a mobile classroom in which perception sharpens, conversations unfold, and artistic ideas emerge organically, meeting railway employees and other creatives working in a relevant context.

The course combines theory, fieldwork, and experimentation. Readings - including Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey and Bachelard’s Poetics of Space - frame discussions on perception, infrastructure, and spatial transformation. Guided visits to unique railway sites, supported by Deutsche Bahn and local railway communities, provide access to spaces rarely open to the public. These encounters form the foundation for individual artistic responses through photography, sound, video, writing, installation, interdisciplinary formats and more.

The workshop fosters autonomous production through exchange among participants from diverse backgrounds. The final exhibition offers a portfolio-strengthening opportunity rooted not in institutional mediation but in a hands on public exhibition practice

Course leader

Natalia Irina Roman

Fee info