June 4 – 29, 2014
9214 is a short video work which has an interesting origin story. The work you see is not the actual piece I had intended to make. In the spring of 2010, I had finished a script for a short narrative film I wanted to make that summer. The script revolved around a story of two siblings who would walk the tracks and walk home at the same time as a certain train ran its schedule. As my schedule allowed, I found myself venturing to a local railroad crossing to observe the passing trains. If I was lucky, I would be able to see two passing trains in the few hours I sat and patiently watched by the tracks.
On the occasions that I was able to catch a passing train, I noticed an interesting among the occupants of the vehicles stopped at the crossing. As the seconds approached and passed into minutes, I watched as faces turned from boredom into impatience or annoyance. Some cars would make a U-turn and find alternate passages than take the time to watch the train pass. Seeing these reactions made me think about how much our appreciation or awe of industrial marvels has changed over time.
I recalled the urban legend of the public screening of L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat) by the Lumière Brothers. As cinema was still a relatively new technology at the time, there exist reports that at the first screening, some viewers were unaware they were watching a projection on a screen and ran in terror as they watched a steam locomotive approaching them. I couldn’t help but think about the marked difference in people watching in awe of cinema or running in terror from imminent danger, to sitting with heads resting on arms to turning around to avoid inconvenience.
So in that time spent at the railroad crossings, I wondered if there was any way to revive that energy of cinema and the train. As train after train passed, I noticed a fairly sizable gap between the bottom of the passing freight cars and the ground of the rail. It struck me that there was enough space to put a small camera in between the ground and passing train. There was potential to actually create the scenario of what the fear-struck audiences members in the Lumière Brothers’ screening thought was going to happen.
9214 is a collaboration with the industrial beast of the freight train. While immediately referencing The Arrival of a Train, the video work also acts a reference to avant-garde and experimental cinema. As the train cars pass and flash by, the motion becomes reminiscent of scratch films and flicker films. Through the rumble, hiss, and squeaks of thousands of pounds of machinery pass by, perhaps a little bit of intrigue and awe can be reignited for those who happen to meet the lowering arms of a railroad crossing.
Takahiro Suzuki (he/him/his) is a Maine-based artist and educator. He completed his BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia concentrating in the mediums of photography and cinematography, and received his MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work and research practices as an artist serve as a form of inquiry. Each investigation offers a path toward further curiosity, rather than a grasp toward certainty. The end product for his works is not so much a thesis upon which to land, but rather, an open hypothesis for the audience to consider. His works have exhibited and screened nationally and internationally. Suzuki also serves as the co- founder and co-curator of aCinema, a collaboration with Janelle VanderKelen which presents experimental film and video screenings at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, WI.