043: Goodbye Platform 5 - GRAPEVINE
This piece was inspired by the Central Trainstation of Maastricht. We highly recommend listening to this piece on location.
Goodbye Platform 5
Text: GRAPEVINE
The train station (like a train itself) is a heterotopia; a world within a world, mirroring what is on the outside but in a contradictory or transforming manner. In concept, everything in and around the station is built for the functionality of the traveler. When you look around you see big pathways for crowds of people, signage in bright colors and little words, repetitive dots on the floor and straight proportionate lines. Platforms are in symmetry. Trains arrive and depart on schedule. The bell rings before the door opens and before the door closes, and there’s a big clock that tells the time. Crowds assemble and disperse, people pass, footsteps echo and the train departs in an infinite cycle.
But conceptuality is not reality. When we zoom in and look at the station on a micro level we see a world that’s entirely more subjective, chaotic and emotional than the rigid, functional idea the station was built for. If the station is a place of arrival and departure, it is also a place of welcome and goodbye. In ‘Of Other Spaces’ (1967) Foucault (1926-1984) writes ‘A train is an extraordinary bundle of relations because it is something through which one goes, it is also something by means of which one can go from one point to another, and then also something that goes by’. In this audio file I tried to incorporate those three different views on trains and train stations. Furthermore, the stylistic architectural elements of the train station, built in 1913 according to the specific architectural style of the region Maasland and Liège (the Mosan Renaissance), sparked a notion of gallantry and romanticism.
The first ever cross-border railway was built from Maastricht to Aachen in 1853. After that followed a railway to Hasselt and Liège, beforebuilding a railway to connect Maastricht to the rest of the Netherlands. The station has always symbolised a meeting point. A single connection in a network for, not only transporting people, but also ideas, currency, objects, services, friends and lovers.
Goya van der Heijden, also known as GRAPVINE is an artist constantly trying to test herself and seeks experimentation where possible. Regularly she diverts to a different artistic way of expressing herself. this has lead to an diverse output of work at a young age. She is a collector of memories, moods and feelings, and tries to find original ways to display these to us, not only through her praxis in the visual arts but also as an musician.
“Objective” representation of the train station. Picture by Julien Theunissen
