SCREENS / TRAINS & TRACKS

Just like any other form of transport, the train has altered our perception of distance and space: speed makes distances shorter. Moreover, with the arrival of the Internet, the entire world is just a mouse click away: it comes to us in real time via all sorts of screens. Conversely, we go out into the world with a screen in our hand to record, edit and share landscapes, monuments, and other landmarks. How does that affect our experience of the here and now? Can we still distinguish the ‘real’ world from the virtual one? 

For SCREENS, you get on a train and find yourself in another world: the windows of the carriage turn into high resolution screens showing images created in a model train landscape. As you travel along the Belgian railway network, you feel like you are rolling through toy versions of other landscapes and cities. From the ‘real’ world to an unreal, virtual world. As if you are travelling inside Google Maps, or appear to be in the Caribbean, thanks to a filter on Zoom... 

Kris Verdonck perfects the illusion in this new immersive video installation. When you get on a train in SCREENS, you sit inside a real carriage and at the same time you are elsewhere. You are really in an artificial toy world. Both here, and not here: an ultimate form of being in transit?  

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EUROPALIA / TRAINS & TRACKS