“Why are we here now? — After the Wildly Improbable”, an interdisciplinary programme, curated by Adania Shibli at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, departing from the question ‘what would a railway say, if it were to speak, about our journey through the century to the here and now?’ and addressing the unfinished large-scale railway projects meant to connect Berlin with Bagdad, Damascus with Mecca and Jerusalem with Alexandria, in the late 19th century, invited visual artists, writers, sociologists, anthropologists, and thinkers to operate as mediators for this speech.

Devoted to the keen relationship between language and bodies, Musa paradisiaca presented “The Intimate Knowledge of Things”, a public session focused on velocity, transmutation, and man–machine technology evolving from a monologue by a steam machine operator and his love for inanimate beings, through slide-projected line drawings, depicting a set of two-legs hybrid creatures formed by both natural and mechanical elements, synchronised with live storytelling.

The railway now speaks from its own perspective—divulging secrets from below and above the ground along its tracks. Prevalent plant species have long forever disappeared from the immediate environment; sacks of gold coins had been hidden beneath the tracks, while faith continues to spring from the planned final destination that the railway never managed to reach. At times, the silhouettes of women are seen at one of its platforms, while men turned into machines.

Adania Shibli