rail panorama

here the final result of scanning the junction from south- to north-station. hundrets of images were taken on a rather adventurous trip along the railroad tracks on a sunday morning in early november - sticking them together it resulted in the biggest image we`ve ever made - going to the pixel-borders of photoshop and the very end of performance of our laptops (at least my good old dell is ready to retire now)...

a 28m long printversion and an interactive installation allowing to stop the train on a virtual travel at certain positions by walking on a huge city map can be currently viewed in brussels T.A.G. gallery close to north station... the doors will be opened again during the cimatics festival...

final shots...

the first week of november was marked by harsh (long) belgium nights along the scar... redoing our nightly walk along the railroad tracks we encountered some more hidden spots that we somehow didnt recognize before - an opening in a wooden wall between a tunnel and the adjunct houses serves homeless people as a place to spend their nights - it`s one of those typical cut of spaces - one meter wide and flanked on both sides by more than 6m high walls it`s this sort of places chinese people would build a multi-family house in - here it openes up a narrow view to the sky - a kloof that one might encounter between the towers of a typical street in manhattan - but then in another scale - brussels style!

here a selection of photographic documents showing a variety of places that became staged and disturbed during those nights... (large scale prints of those images will be shown from 20th of nov. until 5th of dec. in brussels congress station).

day II

this weekend a second session around the north quarter took place. entering a semi public platform of a high rise building one gets a great (urban) view on the north tunnel exit of the railway connection. surrounded by illuminated office towers, the black hole keeps a low profile within the image of the city. Above the raillevel a second layer of cabels "floats" between the towers - like a subtile counterpart to the lines on the ground. this electric cables are hold by masts situated on the side of the "scar" and exactly such one got our first target this time. interfering the elevated parking lot, the mast (column) got a layer of noise-particles, randomly moving within the boundary of the "disturbing artefact". a second shot was done right above the tunnels hole - scanning the surrounding area we could capture a very "typical" brussels (night) atmosphere...

as second location the entrance of the train station "chapelle" was chosen. more difficult in terms of placing the projector and some unexpected obstacles made this one a bit tougher - yet we did two short shots and have to re-view the results...

after all at 5 in the morning we were again surprised of the silence and good conditions we could fullfill our mission - no police interruptions - no thiefs... so far. m&m

LOCATIONS on google.maps

>> goto full map

day I

07.08.2008: the preparations are done. a first session along the north-south connection shall happen tonight - improvising on various pre-selected spots important information (regarding environmental lighting, visability, reactions of passers-by,...) will be gathered and documented. Carrying the mobile projection unit with little problems in the train from Ghent to Brussels we had to fix a technical damage first before we could start - unfortunately it started to rain right then and we were doubting about the success of the mission. At the end it stopped for a while and we decided to challenge the (in)famous weather of a typical mid-August night in Belgium in the quest for nice, sad, useless spots along the beloved north-south scar.

With the help of our loyal multimedia-multipurpose-multiterrain-multi fantastic autonoumus unit we took our first steps to conquer the nocturnal city, at least untill the batteries stopped working and it it started raining again.

During the process we encountered various lost wills on their way home, few police cars, a couple of people looking for bitches, an homeless' and rather unfriendly dog and a lot of cold. Upcoming intense sessions.

Sept. 1-7

Mapping the scar...

We are trying to "slit-scan" the trajectory from north to south station on both sides in order to get a continous panorama and a overview of the project area with odd and unusal insights in the cities backyards... to get an idea here a first trial within a trains cabin...

SAMPLING THE CITY

ENCOUNTERED TYPOLOGIES OF URBAN LEFTOVERS
from Brussels South- (Midi) to North-Station

MAP:


CATALOGUE (selection):


an full catalogue including a documentation of the interventions shall be published as a project booklet by the end of September 08.