The Slow Line: Art Through Train Travel and Public Transit Spaces

A site-based class turning trains, stations, and movement into artistic material. Through fieldwork, theory, and public encounters, participants create works for a final exhibition at railway stations

The Slow Line invites participants to explore how artistic practice can expand beyond institutional frameworks into public space, mobility, and actual travel experience. Set in and around railway stations in Berlin and Brandenburg, the class turns travel, waiting, and the rhythms of movement into inspiration for artistic practices. It culminates in a public exhibition at stations and light-based interventions in a historic tower, visible to commuters and passing trains.

The theme ENOUGH acts as critique and invitation: enough of institutional hierarchies, closed selection systems, and sterile white cubes. Instead, we shift the focus toward artistic work that grows from travel experience and direct engagement with the public realm. Participants develop site-responsive works on platforms, trains, and inside dormant railway structures, addressing the social, poetic, and ecological dimensions of travel.

Train journeys function as both method and metaphor: slow, collective movement as an alternative to acceleration, and as a gesture toward sustainability in times of climate urgency. The train becomes a mobile classroom in which perception sharpens, conversations unfold, and artistic ideas emerge organically, meeting railway employees and other creatives working in a relevant context.

The course combines theory, fieldwork, and experimentation. Readings - including Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey and Bachelard’s Poetics of Space - frame discussions on perception, infrastructure, and spatial transformation. Guided visits to unique railway sites, supported by Deutsche Bahn and local railway communities, provide access to spaces rarely open to the public. These encounters form the foundation for individual artistic responses through photography, sound, video, writing, installation, interdisciplinary formats and more.

The workshop fosters autonomous production through exchange among participants from diverse backgrounds. The final exhibition offers a portfolio-strengthening opportunity rooted not in institutional mediation but in a hands on public exhibition practice.

Schedule

Days 1–4 – Introduction; theory inputs; first station observations; fieldwalks; train travel and train-based fieldwork; railway site visits; material collection; concept sketches; peer feedback; meetings with creatives working in the railway context and with railway employees.

Day 5 – Pause / individual planning.

Days 6–10 – Production phase; individual and group work; exhibition setup and light intervention; public exhibitions; closing reflections.
 

Prior application requirements

Short statement (max. 1 page) on your interest in mobility, public space, or site-specific work; Brief note on what you hope to explore during the class; CV.

Knowledge requirements

• No prior railway or public art knowledge needed
• Basic familiarity with artistic or creative research methods helpful
• Openness to working process oriented, outdoors and in transit is essential

Equipment requirements

• Computer (laptop) for editing, writing, and documentation
• Any tools relevant to your own artistic practice, depending on what you plan to work with during the course (e.g., sketching materials, sound-recording devices, camera, video equipment, drawing tablets, etc.)

Natalia Irina Roman is an artist, curator, and researcher whose work investigates how mobility infrastructures - especially railways - shape perception, public space, and collective experience. She has developed an innovative teaching method that turns train journeys into artistic practices through observational travel, multi-sensory fieldwork in motion, and site-responsive production on trains, platforms, and in dormant railway architectures. She has been teaching at Bauhaus University Weimar and Berlin University of Arts.

Her Fulbright Fellowship in New York City deepened her research into interlocking towers and transit thresholds, informing ongoing collaborations in Berlin and Brandenburg with railway organisations and local communities. These partnerships open restricted infrastructures - signal towers, lock sheds, service areas - for artistic and curatorial experimentation. Roman designs teaching formats in these contexts, including classes conducted on trains and workshops situated in active stations. Her railway-related projects and past classes can be viewed under #gesternstellwerk.

She currently leads an international Creative Europe cooperation project, an artist in residency on trains across Europe, she has created public artworks supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, and has worked in cultural education since 2017. Roman also serves on juries for public art and interdisciplinary cultural programmes, advocating for accessible, transparent and context-sensitive evaluation practices.