Moving Land – Performances for Passing Trains

Traveling by train is a waste of time for many people. It's all about overcoming a track as fast as possible. Not so for the travelers on the Jena Paradies - Naumburg train route on 26 and 27 August 2017. The intervention "Bewegtes Land – Inszenierungen für vorbeifahrende Züge" (Moving Land - Performances for Passing Trains) transformed the landscape into a 30 km long stage for quirky and entertaining short performances. A really great project that made train travelers to the audience and residents into actors.

Today's means of transport promise a quick connection, but separate the travelers from the land they cross and the people who live there. Speed ​​hampers the encounter of the travelers with those who remain, the mobile with the immobile, the urban with the rural, according to the initiators of "Moving Land".

Along the train route Jena Paradies - Naumburg, the Berlin artist duo Datenstrudel staged surreal and sometimes slapstick scenes: flying hay bales, running bushes, a shark in the hall, people looking at the train travelers on ladders. The framework was a modern retro version of the hare and hedgehog race: a runner challenged the train to the race, started together at the first station, appeared in between and went through a staged destination at the last station.

All in all, the project managed 24 small encounters that were fun for actors and audiences, bringing them closer to each other, and not least raising the question of how the tempo of the train influenced our perceptions.

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