Schwebebahn

Darren Almond

1995 · Single-channel digital video, transferred from Super-8 film, black-and-white and color, sound, 12 min. · Photographs

This film was made on Europe’s only suspended urban rail line, the Wuppertal Schwebebahn in Germany. Inaugurated in 1901, the "floating railway" is both archaic and futuristic—the perfect vehicle for Almond’s hallucinatory, almost hypnotic transformations of time and space. The artist used a primitive handheld Super 8 camera for the crude beauty of its hazily colored images; he then inverted and reversed the footage while also slowing its speed. One of the film’s most stunning effects is that it encourages confusion between what the mind knows (the monorail is in the air above the river, streets, and houses) and what is seen (a train passing through an upside-down world).

Artist

Darren Almond

Date

1995

Medium

Single-channel digital video, transferred from Super-8 film, black-and-white and color, sound, 12 min.

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Henry Nias Foundation Inc. Gift, 2001