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Human Rights in the river Seine

A Human Rights artwork for the Parisian subway corridors


Date:
25 November 2020
Year :
1987
Location :
Corridor of the RATP subway, Paris

After Schein’s first subway project constructed on a New York Sidewalk, in 1985, she decided that she was going to create a network of subway stations in all the cities. Her first idea was to present this concept to the RATP subway of Paris.

This very first proposal was to be built into a corridor between two stations. The map of the subway network was to be wrapped around a 3-dimensional space and create an effect as if one was walking inside a computer. The River Seine was to be built with running blue colored LED lights that would print the Human Rights as a flux of water.

In 1988 this first proposal was presented to Jan Hoet the famous Gent Museum curator who thought that subways were not a place for artists to work in.

After this meeting, Schein immediately decided that she was going to present it to the RATP in Paris, who appreciated the proposal. In the course of discussions and feasibility matters, the project changed the face and became the world-known Concorde station.

The founding subject of connecting Human Rights in a democratic underground location did not change.