în (ne)atenția tuturor pasagerilor,

Ramona Buia was born in Timisoara, Romania in the summer of 2000. She was raised partly in the flat fields of Romania, partly in a valley among its mountains, and partly by the sea in Italy. Those were the school years, the years of playing outdoors, working in a café by the sea with her family, and volunteering for all kinds of cultural organisations and events. When she began her bachelor's programme, Ramona moved to the Netherlands, starting her Dutch narratives. Over all these years, she has been shaped by an environment grounded in a strong culture of slowness and collective care. Nowadays, the author is fascinated by organic and inorganic phenomena, landscapes, gardening, natural and reclaimed materials, making processes, and everything that bears a trace, a scar, or a memory.

This photographic sequence explores the disorienting stimuli of railway stations. Shot on 35 mm colour film, the three photographs capture three moments that precede a train journey. The first is one of mental preparation: arriving at the station early and trying to compress the waiting time by staying outside, in front of the building. The second is physical preparation: discovering the station’s interior, reading the departure boards, picking up last-minute essentials, looking for the right platform. The final moment offers a chance for both body and mind to briefly come to rest by claiming a small patch of the platform for the last waiting moments. The train arrives. The quiet visual language of the images contrasts with the lived reality of these moments, leaving the overwhelming soundscape that accompanies them to your imagination. Car horns, engines idling, whispering and loud voices, shouting, electronic beeps, loudspeaker announcements, coffee machines, more beeping, screeching wheels on rails, the conductor's whistle, footsteps echoing across different floor surfaces, the rattle of plastic suitcase wheels over those same floors, rainfall on the roof...and suddenly I'm distracted, rushing to make sure I don't miss my train. How about you?