The line up for art project Station to Station is an ATP veteran-meets-art-nerd’s wet dream. Patti Smith, Cat Power, Thurston Moore and Beck share show time with artists of the calibre of Ed Ruscha, Olafur Eliasson and the man behind the project, Californian multi tasking photographer, sculptor and artist Doug Aitken. The snag: you only get one minute snippets of each them, in Aitken’s documentary film about the project, which gives 62 x 60 second glimpses of what went down on the railroad.
Aitken’s idea was take a train across America from the Atlantic to the Pacific across 4000 miles for 24 days in 2013 stopping en route to create art moments as part of a wider ‘happening’. The film is a short trip; the mood, the art and the artists change moment-to-moment. The focus is on collaboration as artists from different backgrounds meet on the road or in events in major cities en route. Beck sings with a gospel choir in the Mojave desert; Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson stays onboard to make art from the speed of a train, Giorgio Moroder gives a 60 second lesson on the creation of electro funk. The art is everywhere; even the train is a ‘kinetic light structure’, meaning it looks the business in illuminated side panelling.
The feature length film is a tease that gives one-minute performance and then moves on. It is an impressive, sometimes creatively inspiring sight that leaves you wanting more. As luck would have it, Station to Station has pulled into the Barbican in London, the one international leg of the project for a 30-day residency. Over 100 artists are scheduled to perform, appear or in the case of Ed Ruscha, cook 100 cactus omelettes for diners to enjoy, and no two days of STS will be the same. You can investigate immersive yurts constructed by Kenneth Anger, Urs Fischer, Liz Glynn and Ernesto Neto, view a multi-coloured smoke installation by Olaf Breuning and watch Station to Station, the film in the Art Gallery, where it is screened daily until the train stops running on 26th July.
is in cinemas now, on curated streaming site mubi.com and at barbican.org.uk until 26th July.
Credits
Text Colin Crummy