Travelogues: A Little Something For The Journey
The posters featuring silhouettes that appeared on buses and trams all over Dublin during this (very rainy) May intrigued me. Striking posters all bear an image of a member of the transport staff and a piece of text alongside. The text contains a snippet of memory or a notable experience from the staff member pictured. Feeling that they merited some investigation, I looked up the background to the mini memoirs. This is a fascinating art installation by American artist and DIT graduate Theresa Nanigian. You can see parts of it on buses, trains and trams in the Dublin area during the first two weeks in May. If you haven’t set foot on public transport for years, then try to do so before the exhibition finishes. It will be well worth the effort I promise. But how did it all come about?
To collect the material for her work, Nanigian spent nine months in a public transport ‘residency’. This involved talking to a wide variety of staff with Dublin Bus, Ianrόd Éireann, Bus Éireann, Luas, Dublin bikes and taxi companies. The results are quite eye opening; the stories are funny, touching and sometimes sad. I have been trying to catch as many of them as possible, but if you do not get a chance to see them, there is a website with all of the Travelogues content. Of great fascination are the boards detailing travel statistics. It has to be said that there are certainly some mind boggling ones for travellers to read. I particularly liked the figures about the lost property items left on public transport. Who would have thought that anyone would leave a prosthetic leg or a Samurai sword behind? Both are not items easily mislaid one would have thought. I would really like to know if they ever got collected.
The Per Cent for Art Scheme funded the public art project, with support from the National Transport Authority and the councils of Dublin City, Finglas, South County Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Rathdown. Metro Herald is the project’s media partner; you may have seen some of the work featured in the daily paper. As I mentioned above, there is a website giving all of the stories related and crediting the participants who gave their time to the project. While the pieces on the travel network will shortly be taken down, I hope that the web site will remain for public viewing. It has certainly been nice to have something different read on the way to work.
Regular Dart travellers will surely know about the poems that have been featured on the trains for many years, similar to the poems on the London underground project. Who knows, maybe we will yet have a long running Luas literary corner to brighten up the daily commute. Reading the carriage walls also means that you can read over someone else’s shoulder without being thought rude….
For further details: www.travelogue.ie
Irish News Review 