Berlin’s central station is an armored metaphor, the embodiment of our paranoid 21th century society, in which anxiety, information and control blend into an amalgam of surveillance instruments. Everything is electronically operated, every colorful feel-good commercial is backed by a camera lens. Welcome to our century, Foucault.
At least 100 surveillance cameras – it is likely that there are more – capture every visitor entering the massive halls of glass and steel. Day after day, security guards will see motionless faces pass through the gangways, escalators, and platforms. They will see people rushing, hustling, running and chasing – time is running, after all – to get to their trains before they leave them incarcerated at the station. Most people, don’t notice, but they are on camera, every second of every day, turning them into an absurd object of art, comparable with ants in an oversized terrarium.
And all of a sudden, time stops.
As he walks up to her, the fire in his eyes lightens up. His arm around her waist, holding and turning her as she swirls around him, effortless like a feather in the air. They connect, they merge, turn into one to the rhythm of an Argentinean Tango. People stand, stop and stare as the couple moves around the masses of metal and glass.
As the music fades, everything is over. Back to reality, back to Panopticon. Back being an object of art. Waiting for the next performance, for the next daydream in this freezing winter night.
EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS! 