Let’s meet at the station

18.06 → 25.09.2022

Rencontrons-nous à la gare is part of the inaugural theme Train Zug Treno Tren put forward by the three museums of Plateforme 10.

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.

A joint exhib­i­tion

Rencon­trons-nous à la gare is the first mudac exhib­i­tion in its new build­ing. This exhib­i­tion, which is presen­ted from June 18 to Septem­ber 26, 2022, is part of the common theme of the three museums of Plate­forme 10: Train Zug Treno Tren.
The three exhib­i­tions, conceived by each of the museums of Plate­forme 10, enrich the meta­phor of this rail­way history by paying homage to the former voca­tion of the site in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity of Lausanne station, a stop­over for the myth­ical Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express.
Favor­ing the cross­ing of views, the three exhib­i­tions free them­selves from any literal or strictly chro­no­lo­gical approach. Trans­dis­cip­lin­ary, they prefer instead to cross their subject from one side to the other, symbol­iz­ing in a subtle mixture of iden­tity strength and versat­il­ity the genesis of this unique plat­form that is the arts district of Lausanne.

“The imagery of trains” at MCBA

With more than 60 master­pieces from Gior­gio de Chirico to Edward Hopper and from Paul Delvaux to Leonor Fini, The Imagery of Trains takes us on an epic rail­way jour­ney.

“Cross­ing Lines” at Photo Elysée

Cross­ing Lines, explores new approaches to rail­way history for over more than a century and a half, from the earli­est train exper­i­ences in the 19th century to its uses today.

Behind the scenes of the exhib­i­tion

Rencon­trons-nous à la gare, an exhib­i­tion created with 20 tons of bricks! In epis­ode 3 of the web-series “Le mudac prend ses quart­i­ers”, Marco Cost­antini and Rafaël Santianez take you behind the scenes of the exhib­i­tion.

Curators Marco Costantini
Deputy director

Rafaël Santianez
Research associate
Staging HEAD – Genève, Architecture d’intérieur

Javier F. Contreras
Head of the department

Valentina de Luigi
Assistant of the department

Youri Kravtchenko
Project Manager

Camille Bagnoud et Manon Portera
Assistants

Shana Bennett et Gaïane Legendre
BA students

Main partener

Exhibition partner

Exhibition partner