grasswire

Kamnik-Ljubljana trains offer a valuable lesion in visual culture to attentive observer. And I don’t mean the colourful graffiti that give a fake illusion that we live in modern, urban society. The compartments are decorated with children’s drawings which vividly display how perspective is nothing more than socially constructed convention, how it is not a necessary element or realist representations – which was in fact part of my yesterday’s lecture.
But there is more to these slowly fading drawings than the unconventional mode of representation. They are remains of times gone by. I can still remember the concourse organised by the railway company in the mid 1980’s. All primary schools in the country participated in it and I was soooo disappointed when my drawing was not selected. I guess now I remember the feeling of disappointment far more vividly than my not accepted drawing. But imagine if your drawing was accepted… You could be riding this train more than 20 years later and your drawing would still serve as a backdrop for tired faces of early morning commuters. You could even have a child of the age you were when you drew it. I wonder how many people actually take notice of them, or see the inscriptions “Yugoslav Railways” or “JŽ” in many of them, which always elicit a slight smile on my face.