Transitio NYC - Tornio - 2003 -- (TRANSITIO Locator)
Duration: 1 hour and 3 minutes - Location: 17.3 miles
Solange Fabião
NYC – TORNIO
It is a moment during a January afternoon at the Aine Art Museum cafeteria. The day begins to dim early, although each day provides more light, enhanced by the abundance of snow that reflects it. This is a "blue moment." I close my eyes for awhile I hear motors running, brakes screeching, horns honking. A quiet town has awakened. Somewhere there is a street full of life. Where am I? Is it Manhattan – in Tornio?
The Aine Art Museum presents New York-based Brazilian artist Solange Fabião's video installation, Transitio NYC - Tornio, Duration: 1 hour and 3 minutes - location 17.3 miles. The artist has freehandedly filmed New York's famed Broadway from the perspective of a taxi passenger, capturing diverse street scenes from the Bronx to Wall Street. Filmed in one shot, comprised of one hour and three minutes, the video is an unedited, diagonal passage through the city, covering 17.3 miles (approximately 30 km.). Today this one-hour journey can be experienced in Tornio. Although the Manhattan milieu is already familiar to Finnish viewers from films and television, Fabião's video installation uniquely transcends this familiarity by conveying the frenetic feeling of urban motion. The viewer is transported by the artist's camera into a seemingly simultaneous existence with the city, mirroring the taxi's random movements through the streets of uptown and downtown, covering the socioeconomic expanse of New York.
The video's pace is determined by the traffic on Broadway as well as the speed of the yellow taxi. As the taxi accelerates, the movement is recorded by Fabião’s camera as a merging of colors, reminiscent of abstract painting. Occasionally the artist zooms in, pausing on random objects; these snippets of seemingly static imagery alongside the moving elements give rhythm to Duration: 1 hour and 3 minutes – Location 17.3 miles, and severs the definitive line between figurative and nonfigurative art.
The video was first presented in New York on September 20, 2001, nine days after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Since then, the piece has been shown in another metropolis, Mexico City, and is presently on view in Tornio, a small hibernating town in Northern Finland, near the Arctic Circle. Today Manhattan is certainly different from what it was during the filming of Duration: 1 hour and 3 minutes – location 17.3 miles and so are we, the viewers – whether we live in Tornio, Mexico City, or New York City.
I am very pleased that the Aine Art Museum in Tornio has the opportunity to introduce Solange Fabião's video installation to the people of Northern Finland.
Katriina Pietilä-Juntura
Chief Curator
The Aine Art Museum
Installation View at the Aine Art Museum Tornio-Finland 2003
Reviews:
La mirada de la Madona por Deborah Cullen - NY 2003 - Dossier: Isidro Blasco - pages 14 -15.
29.1.2003 - Pohlolan Sanomat -Numbing documentation / Marja-Leena Hyvärinen
Broadway entered Tornio by Timo Jokelainen Kaleva Newspaper, January 20th, 2003
