Story Info
Story Info
Yvonne Meyer & Noemi Hopf
Bahnhof, Bern, Switzerland
2012
Type of Wounded Place
Story & Experience
Noemi and I did our Global Earth Exchange at the main train station in Bern, in an abandoned, neglected area where there were three warning signs to scare people away. We observed that the place seemed dead, even though the tumult of the train station was all around and underneath it. We imagined how the place would have looked two hundred years ago. We found some astonishing garbage: even heirloom crystal. The child in me got excited about that. Anyway, I suddenly discovered a tiny bit of beauty in this place: right next to the bars of a grate grew some vegetation that will no doubt take over in a few years. The stillness in the midst of the tumult of the Bern train station and the young men playing ball nearby breathed new life into this place. Our act of beauty was: we set up two sculptures of wood that a good friend of ours had formed. Around them we arranged a circle made out of trash. And above all: we lived and showed our feminine beauty! We got many compliments about it during that day. And as soon as we were at our place and the circle was on the ground, people showed interest: “What are you doing there?” Finally, we bravely did a Hawaiian dance and sang a song: Emalama, Eka heiou… Earth and Sky, Sea and Stone, hold this Land in sacredness! Yes, may we humans hold ever more spots of the Earth in Sacredness.
Noemi and I did our Global Earth Exchange at the main train station in Bern, in an abandoned, neglected area where there were three warning signs to scare people away. We observed that the place seemed dead, even though the tumult of the train station was all around and underneath it. We imagined how the place would have looked two hundred years ago. We found some astonishing garbage: even heirloom crystal. The child in me got excited about that. Anyway, I suddenly discovered a tiny bit of beauty in this place: right next to the bars of a grate grew some vegetation that will no doubt take over in a few years. The stillness in the midst of the tumult of the Bern train station and the young men playing ball nearby breathed new life into this place. Our act of beauty was: we set up two sculptures of wood that a good friend of ours had formed. Around them we arranged a circle made out of trash. And above all: we lived and showed our feminine beauty! We got many compliments about it during that day. And as soon as we were at our place and the circle was on the ground, people showed interest: “What are you doing there?” Finally, we bravely did a Hawaiian dance and sang a song: Emalama, Eka heiou… Earth and Sky, Sea and Stone, hold this Land in sacredness! Yes, may we humans hold ever more spots of the Earth in Sacredness.
Bahnhof, Bern, Switzerland
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