All aboard for “a journey through modern creativity”, a 24-day, 4,000-mile chug from sea to sea across the US. Your entertainment is a merry band of artists, musicians, thinkers and pranksters, gathered by multimedia artist Dan Aitken to ride a train from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The price of admission? All the introspective hmm-hahing that being trapped on a train with artists and musicians, thinkers and pranksters entails.
Aitken’s film – 62 one-minute shorts strung together with shots of rail yards and rolling stock – captures the spirit of what they used to call a happening. Certified names (Patti Smith, Beck, Thurston Moore) share the trip with flamenco dancers, cattle traders and the train’s engineer, Greg, who has spent decades shuttling the wagons back and forth.
The artists’ blathering about the creative process and the nature of existence gets monotonous. It’s the ordinary folk that keep the film on-track.
