Let’s meet at the station

Focusing on the idea of meeting and the roman de gare (the pulp novel but literally in French the “train station novel”), mudac places the individual at the center of its show. As the classic locus of reunions, departures, and chance encounters, the station and the train are places in which life plays out, spaces that are especially favorable to the imagination. This union of reality and fiction lies at the heart of the story told by the exhibition Rencontrons-nous à la gare (Let’s Meet at the Station), which is punctuated with objects that spring from the field of design as well as contemporary artworks. Extending and rounding out this wonderful range of items are moving images from the worlds of advertising and music videos. Archival footage from the Swiss federal railway network can be seen alongside artworks by Christian Boltanski, Salvador Dali, Sophie Calle, Marina Abramovic, and Studio Job.

In order to enhance the objects with a fictional component, the exhibition comes with a contemporary airport novel, Terre-des-Fins, published by Editions Zoé, which was written by three experienced authors: Bruno Pellegrino, Aude Seigne and Daniel Vuataz. The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to become, during their visit, the character of the novel they most identify with.
The scenography is the work of the Interior Architecture Department of HEAD – Genève, Geneva University of Art and Design -, and turns mudac’s new exhibition halls into a film set welcoming visitors to a hypothetical mining town reminiscent of the one in the novel and inviting them to become the heroes and heroines of their own scenario.