"Not all paradoxes have to be paralyzing."

David Foster Wallace - The Nature of Fun 
from Fiction Writer Magazine, September 1998.

WHY DID YOU WHY DID YOU DO

WOULD YOU CATCH ME IF I SAID THAT I'M OFF THE CHAIN

I'm the dude that cries,
Cries for happiness and cries for life

YO FLYING CAR

http://www.terrafugia.com/index.html

"GRT South of Kitchener" - A critical Perspective

 

In this short work by Conan Lai, footage taken at the front of a bus becomes a tool for exploring the dreadful experience that is public transit. So dreadful that you might actually feel like you're riding in slow-motion or going backwards, two effects which are applied to the central frame’s video, which is superimposed over the same footage of an otherwise normal, forward moving bus ride (the outer frame). These two frames, the reality of the bus ride and the representation of what it feels like are separated by a thin border also generated from the same footage. The border, however, has been obscured by heavy amounts of magnification. Our experience of the bus ride then seems to be the result of some process of magnification or abstraction, which really is just any attention to detail or thinking which occurs on the bus. 

It's interesting to look at this video from a geographical/historical perspective of the region. GRT not only serves Kitchener, but also the adjacent cities of Waterloo and Cambridge. This video was released at a time considered to be key in Waterloo's development: when the decision to implement LRT (Light-Rail Transit) was moved forward. Is this video nodding at Waterloo's booming growth in direct relation to Kitchener's economic and social plight? Consider the title of the work, "GRT South of Kitchener." In this video the bus is seen only travelling south (backwards), not North to prosperous Waterloo but towards the even more plightful Cambridge. Is the video's title an attempt at geographic accuracy? An intentional omission of 'Cambridge', a city name with too many negative associations in Southern Ontario to even spell out?

Cambridge-bashing aside, the individual elements "GRT", "South", and "Kitchener" bring to mind associations of a lower socio-economic class, those unable to afford a car and forced to ride the bus. When we consider this, we may realize: this is what it's like to ride the bus. A limited view of black pavement and grey sedans that doesn't seem to end. At around the 1:00 mark, the sequence from inside the forward-moving bus ends, reality is blacked out, and we are left with an extreme magnification on irrelevant details in the backwards direction which this train of thought propels us. In the last six seconds of the video, our handle on the real is completely unravelled and for a moment we are left with just our lens, our thoughts, and finally, only the magnified backwards movement of cars. Useless thoughts, errata, grey pixels.

Far Nearer

IN FLORIDA, TROPICAL DRUMS, GOOD BEACH MUSIC


Jamie xx - Far Nearer (limited vinyl & download out now - http://farnearer.com) by Numbers