SHANGAI EXPRESS.
Dismanteling the bathroom of a marching train.
Invited to present a project on Galician territorial identity, I decided to focus my approach on some factors I consider decisive on this issue, such as the extraterritoriality, the presence of obsolete and non-operative structures, an the lack of interest from public institutions concerning necessary infrastructure optimization.
I focussed on one of the most conflictive realities of those that form contemporary Galician territorial identity. I am talking about the deficit situation of transport means, specially the railroads system.
Shanghai Express is the popular name given to the train that goes from A Coruña / Vigo to Barcelona.
It was a key element in the constant migratory flows by the Galician population from the beginnings of Twentieth Century to the present day.
This old train (it was constructed in 1964) was not retired from circulation until 2012, after almost fifty years of service, and constitutes a clear example of this situation of abandonment previously mentioned.
Confronting this lack of political will to assume the necessary modernization of this public service, my personal position had to be necessarily eloquent and simultaneously capable of generating public debate and possibilities of change.
Assuming an act of methodical vandalism as an eminently civic position, I traveled on the Shanghai Express from Barcelona to my native locality and, during the course of the trip, disassembled all the elements of one of the bathrooms of this train, throwing every item I dismantled through the railway carriage door and into the emptiness of the night.
SHANGAI EXPRESS.
Dismanteling the bathroom of a marching train.
Invited to present a project on Galician territorial identity, I decided to focus my approach on some factors I consider decisive on this issue, such as the extraterritoriality, the presence of obsolete and non-operative structures, an the lack of interest from public institutions concerning necessary infrastructure optimization.
I focussed on one of the most conflictive realities of those that form contemporary Galician territorial identity. I am talking about the deficit situation of transport means, specially the railroads system.
Shanghai Express is the popular name given to the train that goes from A Coruña / Vigo to Barcelona.
It was a key element in the constant migratory flows by the Galician population from the beginnings of Twentieth Century to the present day.
This old train (it was constructed in 1964) was not retired from circulation until 2012, after almost fifty years of service, and constitutes a clear example of this situation of abandonment previously mentioned.
Confronting this lack of political will to assume the necessary modernization of this public service, my personal position had to be necessarily eloquent and simultaneously capable of generating public debate and possibilities of change.
Assuming an act of methodical vandalism as an eminently civic position, I traveled on the Shanghai Express from Barcelona to my native locality and, during the course of the trip, disassembled all the elements of one of the bathrooms of this train, throwing every item I dismantled through the railway carriage door and into the emptiness of the night.