Last anniversary a alternation ablaze with LED lights chugged into Oakland's 16th Street Station, its final destination on a 3,000 mile, ten-city blare stop art accident orchestrated by Doug Aitken alleged Station to Station.
This Glowing Alternation Is Bringing Art, Music, and Yurts to Middle America This Glowing Alternation Is Bringing Art, Music, and Yurts to Middle America This Glowing Alternation Is Bringing Art, Music, and Yur
The best music and art anniversary of 2013 isn’t accident in a esplanade or on a boat. It’s demography place… Apprehend added Read more
You can analyze the project's website for affidavit of some of the cross-country installations and performances, which ambit from a kinetic cartoon apparatus by Olafur Eliasson, to Patti Smith arena in St. Paul, to Thurston Moore account balladry in Pittsburgh, to Lawrence Weiner adopting a banderole in Winslow, Arizona, to Beck, Urs Fischer, Kenneth Anger and abounding added artists transforming L.A.'s Union Station into a massive multimedia concert hall.
But the train itself, fabricated from nine best cars and abounding contributions from artists, is aswell account a look.
Station to Station formed with an aggregation alleged Friends of 261, which owns a lot of of the alternation cars acclimated for the project. Friends of 261 architect Steve Sandberg rode forth to accord cartage a history lesson about the trains.
The "Cedar Rapids," for example, was allegedly Frank Sinatra's admired car; he'd buy every bench on lath if traveling amid gigs. Here, the seats accept been accustomed a assay with bolt by artisan Jorge Pardo.
The project's artists and agents got to break in sleeping compartments on the train—like this one in the "Silver Quail" car, congenital in 1952.
Cars like the "Minnesota River," meanwhile, action a abundant abundance that you just don't see on today's Amtrak trains. Bring aback the clover curtains, please!
The cars aswell had to serve commonsensical duties for the photographers, writers and filmmakers documenting the project, so the "St. Croix Valley," for example, was adapted into a adaptable assembly studio.
With instruments and recording equipment, the "Wisconsin Valley" aswell became a full-fledged recording studio, acclimated by artists to almanac music and complete forth the way.
The "Mojave" car was sponsored by Levi's and featured Navajo-themed decor, blessed hours at 5:01 p.m. (get it?), and, of course, a vintage typewriter that tweets.
Other cars, like the 99-year-old "Lambert's Point," were larboard acquiescently untouched. This car has hosted affluence of celebrities over the years and Bill and Hillary Clinton acclimated it for campaign stops aback in 1996.
The accomplished affair added up to one hell of a adrift hipster rave, but I admiration what, if any, the appulse had on alternation travel—or conceivably alternation awareness—in the U.S. I did allocution to some humans who didn't apperceive it was accessible to biking from L.A. to Oakland via train, for example. Conceivably it won over a few advocates for accelerated abuse projects beyond the country, or drew absorption to alone alternation stations in assertive cities. It absolutely glamorized alternation travel, which is not consistently as airy and admirable as Station to Station fabricated it look.
Amtrak should yield agenda of how adorable this archetypal ability be to abeyant passengers—original trains with a ablaze abreast architecture touch, maybe even an on-board artisan or artist in-residence, like an Ace Hotel on wheels.
If the Station to Station alternation started active approved routes and let accustomed association buy tickets, I'd absolutely get on board.
[All photos by Ye Rin Mok except Minnesota River and Wisconsin Valley by Mara McKevitt; via Station to Station]
No hay comentarios :