Subsonic Train (2018)

Subsonic train was developed in 2018 during my residency at Rucka in Cesis, Latvia, and focused specifically on the experience of a train cutting through the Latvian landscape. This work consists of an installation of aluminium objects and a sound installation by composer Yota Morimoto. 

In Rucka, a small town of about 18.000 inhabitants, there is an unusual relationship between machine and nature. The smell of oil hangs in the air mixed with the smells of flora and fauna surrounding overgrown tracks. The silence of the rural landscape loudens and intensifies the smallest of details that usually go by unnoticed. Attuning to the sound of the train within this landscape causes a divergent experience of time passing and one of enstranged orientation. 

The aluminum objects encompass an experience of this phenomenon; beaten with a hammer over various tree stumps, the materiality and rhythm of the train comes to be embedded in close relationship of difference and harmony with the nature that surrounds it. During the residency I collated a library of recordings, trying to capture an audible experience of the landscape. For the installation I incorporated speakers with the objects and invited Morimoto to collaborate in realizing the artwork’s score. In response to this invitation, Morimoto created a programmed loop system where parts of the sound recordings of a conversation about the landscape are randomly ordered and played and recorded and played again.

This residency project was funded by Mondriaan Fonds