Christian Catafago

I had never been to Norway; as a child, I had looked upon it in an encyclopedia just as had heard my French grand father, incorporated in the “High Montain Brigade” had been part of the Battle of Narvik.

As I reached Oslo, I immediately immerged myself in the Ring Line #5: this cicle line goes around Oslo, most of its length being in the open countryside. It felt like a larger recreation of the small sized “small train” my childhood that used to take me to the “jardin d’acclimatation”. I definitely had the impression of being part of a story for children; most of the train passengers were large, slender of a theatrical complexion. Their very pale skin in the sun of the morning, surrounded with a almost whitish hear reinforced this impression of acting feature. Even the week-end attire of some children encountered, a full uniform with cap included, was part of the impression.

If this was the ultimate part of the series describing the individuals in a circle subway line, it was even stranger than when I started the series.

This series started when, in 2008-9 we were all embarked in a systemic failure of the financial and consumerist society. It was all ending in a northern version of a Shakespearean play with “Truman Show-esque” proportions. Were we in a society “biting its tail”? Were we living a Sisyphean nightmare of intergenerational proportions? What was the end of all this?

As I was doing a second roundtrip, in an Orwellesque moment, there was in one of the stations a predicament: on the open sky platform, the first rain shelter has “YOU” in large letters on its roof.

The last shelter of the same platform has “GO” on its roof.

Were these two in some way a message?