Landscapes of the Underground

Federico Campagna — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:35:39 +0000

In the morning, in the trains running underground, we sit as still as tools in a box. Most of us keep our eyes closed. Some yawn and stretch, preparing their lungs and muscles for another day. Others look into the screen of their smartphones, and turn into birds crashing into scaffolding, brightly coloured bricks stacking up in puzzles. I look at my fellow travellers, as if they were a landscape. Scientists tell us that we all belong to the same species, that we all are one thing. But around me I see foxes, rocks, rivers, trees. Our clothes are the same, our haircuts, our artificial smells. But to each other, we are as foreign as planets orbiting in the same galaxy. Yet, we are all here together. Ready to be employed, just outside the gates of the tube station. To become something else from what we are. Something bigger than ourselves, something ‘useful’. Citizens, workers, customers, spectators. When we will be out of here, in the dim daylight of Northern Europe, we will fit together within the frame of the mosaics of which we are fragments. We will have names, and our names will lock together into the bigger names of the machines of which we are parts. We will create companies, networks, Nations, markets. We will create everything, and will turn into nothing.

But not yet.

through europe - Underground

Landscapes of the Underground