Gabriel Massan

HOW DO WE GET THERE?

Multi-channel video installation with sound, on a loop, 13 minutes 21 seconds, 2024. Produced by the Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain, Geneva for the Mire program.

From April 29 to June 14, 2026, the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain is pleased to host the Biennial of Urban Art and Nature (re)connecting.earth on the screens of the Mire program at the Chêne-Bourg and Eaux-Vives train stations!

HOW DO WE GET THERE? draws inspiration from the Brazilian phenomenon of train hopping, the practice of stowing away on freight trains to travel across the country. In the work, this informal and often risky mode of transport becomes a metaphor for contemporary social trajectories. Travel is no longer simply a journey from point A to point B, but an uncertain process, made up of detours, obstacles and constant adaptations. From this perspective, the notions of ‘departure’ and ‘arrival’ lose their linear nature. They become unstable states, constantly negotiated between material constraints and individual aspirations, between real geography and subjective experience. Transport, a symbol of mobility and progress, reveals here its limitations and inequalities, particularly in the contexts of the Global South where infrastructure does not guarantee equitable access to travel. The immersive installation designed by Gabriel Massan transposes this reality into a speculative universe. A spaceship traverses hybrid landscapes—both futuristic and fragmented—that defy traditional cartographic conventions. These territories seem to exist outside official frameworks, like interstitial zones where the possibilities of movement and existence are redefined. The digital aesthetic and generated environments immerse the viewer in a sensory experience where fiction, memory and social critique intertwine. Through this work, the artist highlights an experience of displacement marked by precariousness, but also by persistence and inventiveness. Reaching a destination appears to be an uncertain, even unattainable goal. Yet the act of moving itself becomes essential: continuing to move forward constitutes a form of resistance.

Video presented as part of the 3rd (re)connecting.earth Biennial, organised by art-werk.