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With the Schengen agreement, the borders in Europe
have largely disappeared. The vanished borders opened
up the Alps to unchecked transit-traffic and turned
the great valleys into dense traffic channels. Infrastructures
overlap, override each other and remind one of earthworms
which disappear into the ground and reappear. In doing
so, they display indifference and callousness toward
the very territory they pervade. And so it happens that
yet new forms of borders are drawn up, tearing apart
that which grew historically and setting up impassable
barriers. And yet at the same time they do not perceive
the ability of passages or currents to connect the territories
they cross. But what happens to the world surrounding
them? What happens to the world that labours to stitch
up the rifts it has experienced? For the train passengers,
the view passes by, they are crossing a landscape without
experiencing or seeing it. The loss of perception, which
has become part of contemporary train-travel, is paradigmatic
for a society on its journey to losing communication
and to increasing self-reference.
The excursion leads along to Eisack valley and through
a series of rifts and scenic dangers. It is accompanied
by Mosè Ricci, who is developing a new model of protection
for the Italian train-system, namely a concept of noise
barriers which meets and connects the aesthetic and
the ethical demands of architecture and which intervenes
in the landscape using a sensitive instrument.
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