Crazy Train
This summer in London’s Barbican, L.A. artist Doug Aitken presented 100 free, evolving art happenings — the progeny of his mobile project Station to Station. Aitken’s 4,000-mile train journey across America in 2013 included dozens of artists, from musicians like Patti Smith and Cat Power to visual artists like Olafur Eliasson and Ernesto Neto. And while not every stop along the route was a success — our pals who attended the final event held in Oakland’s old 16th Street Station were disenchanted by long lines, bad lighting, poor sound, and art that couldn’t stand up to the surrounding architecture — the trip itself sounded incredible. Like a rolling arts incubator, nine vintage train cars were converted into studios-cum-sleepers, complete with a recording studio where, say, synth pioneer Giorgio Moroder or Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore could noodle away the hours. Between cities, artists worked and talked, clanging passed lush backwaters, lonely deserts, and post-industrial landscapes, as Aitken filmed all the while. The resulting movie is a collage of 62 special moments, from Beck rocking out at a desert drive-in to flamenco dancers using the train as a percussion instrument.
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