The Secret Capital of EGS:
6. External Geopolitical Subway
location: luckan, window, yrjönkatu 27
EGS’s metro transports travellers across borders and eras to new ways of thinking. The train is about to turn round, we hope to see you again soon.
Our walk in the capital of EGS ends at Yrjönkatu and the worksite for the metro station. The excavations for the metro tunnel going on behind these windows have found traces of Eliel Saarinen’s Greater Helsinki boulevards, Alvar Aalto’s concrete terrace squares, Smith-Polvinen’s motorways, the city centre tunnel, and Pasila’s skyscrapers.
EGS coins pop up in the various layers from time to time, and sometimes the excavation workers send long-lost walls and their paintings for conservation in the museums of the capital.
The External Geopolitical Subway will take shape in tunnels that lead backwards and forwards in time and in space from Finland Station to a cave in Sipoo known as the Temple of Lemminkäinen. When completed, people will be able to use the metro to travel across borders and eras, into layers of history and behind maps into a mental Pangaea.
The EGS metro map is a narrative tool, and the train itself can be used to journey into new kinds of thinking. The metro interchanges opening up here soon will offer moments where the past and future play together.
The city is a gateway to routes, stories and connections.
Rather than growing upwards, the capital of EGS is growing in meaning. It is neither beautiful nor ugly. It is functional, open and connecting. It cannot be seen in satellite images. It is a living layer of routes, rhythms, signs, events, codes and stories. It appears and disappears as needed, like a strobe light, the rise of the bass or a tag on a wall.
The city is a gateway to routes, stories and connections. All languages mix. The font is democratic. No one voice is more powerful than another. The capital appears when someone opens their mind and sees a connection where previously they saw a fence. The Secret Capital of EGS is not competing with Helsinki. It runs alongside it and uses the same soil, but different frequencies.
EGS’s parallel city makes visible what is already there, but often unnoticed. The republic is no ready-made utopia, but rather an open and continuous suggestion. Getting around does not require a travel card, and the metro does not even need rails.
Future city makers will paint new pictures on top of this without covering the previous ones completely.
Self-expression is a basic right in the capital of EGS. As long as someone is walking, playing, painting, discussing, loving, building and combining, the capital will continue to expand, not on a map, but in hearts.
Future city makers will paint new pictures on top of this, but they will never manage to cover the previous ones completely. In the Republic of EGS, people know that the city does not really exist: everyone has their own city, their own map, and their own soundtrack.
If anyone happens to walks past and glances at the illegible luminous advertisements, blows into pan pipes, or hops aboard the EGS subway, the hands of the Doomsday Clock may jerk ever so slightly backwards. Even that will not solve the riddle of the city, but someone will have seen a glimpse of the capital that is many versions at the same time.
Things were not better before. In the Republic of EGS, the direction is toward a bright future. We’re just here for a walk. What we leave behind is more important than we are.
Borders create connections
In the ordinary world, borders between some areas have become transparent in recent decades, while in other places walls are still being built today.
EGS’s City Planning Commission proposes a different kind of concept for borders. Here, borders are connections, not barriers. In the republic you don’t head for where the fence is lowest, instead you grab a pair of bolt cutters from your bag, cut a hole in the fence, and climb on through.
Here, citizenship is not based on place of birth, a passport or a border, instead, you become a citizen by participating, suggesting routes, sharing stories, and wandering. The city does not ask who you are. It asks how you are.
The trip is over and you can return to the ordinary world.
Maps Washed by Years, 2025, mixed media on canvas.