S.L. TransPod NYC by Rodney Swanstrom is “…a multi-disciplinary installation that explores travel and transition, inspired by the architecture of transport.” It is a “neutral zone” where the viewer can contemplate where he is and where he wants to go. Rodney Swanstrom is talking about his work at his installation at DiVA 2006 New York (booth of Walsh Gallery). TransPod is currently shown in the Project Room of Walsh Gallery, Chicago (March 17 – April 14, 2006). DiVA Digital & Video Art Fair, New York, March 10, 2006.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 [Background noise]
00:25 [Background noise]
00:30 Do you hear music? I do, I hear music.
00:34 Hello. Welcome.
00:36 [Background noise]
00:42 Hi, my name is Rodney. Nice to meet you. Where are you from?
00:46 Germany. Oh yeah? I live in Mainz.
00:49 You live in Mainz, yeah?
00:51 [Background noise]
01:03 So, welcome to the transport.
01:06 This is my vision of displacement and these neutral zones that we go through when we travel.
01:16 So, going from one point to the next, there's this time that we are in transit, right?
01:22 Whether it's the train or the plane or the automobile, right?
01:25 There are times where we are confined into these contained spaces.
01:30 That's the interior environment space that I've created here to recreate that architecture of transport.
01:38 And the video shows these different applications of how we transport ourselves throughout these various social environments.
01:49 The airports, these subcultures that we go through every day, right?
01:53 The hotel lobbies and these things.
01:57 So, this actually is in Frankfurt at this beautiful Riem Koolhaas at the regional Bahn station in Frankfurt airport.
02:11 And the ICE will be kind of cruising by here.
02:15 It's also about my work, the philosophy of this particular work, this series, is also about being lost.
02:23 And that time where we kind of don't know whether to go left or right, so we go left and we're supposed to go right.
02:28 So, we kind of make these circles and find our place eventually.
02:33 So, it's about displacement, about being lost, but it's also about the joy of being lost because that's actually the most fun.
02:42 It's not the end journey, often.
02:46 It's the getting there.
02:50 So, as you see, I couldn't have orchestrated this any better.
02:55 The woman goes in, the man comes out, looking which way to go, looks left, goes right.
03:02 Someone else going in, doors close.
03:06 Off to the next city.
03:11 This actually is in the Frankfurt airport as well.
03:14 This beautiful typography, this lit floor, and showing the journey, walking through this typography of the city.
03:27 Very symbolic through that application of shadow.
03:31 And working with this negative reverse in the camera, with this series,
03:37 kind of makes a context to Cavallano, the Italian writer who talks about these invisible cities.
03:44 So, with the camera, I make these inverted reverse negative imagery, which distorts the reality, but yet it all seems so similar.
03:59 Very nice drawing.
04:00 Oh, thanks.
04:01 Impressed?
04:02 Oh, thanks.
04:03 It's a lot of fun.
04:04 Thank you very much.
04:06 How did you get to Germany?
04:09 Your wife is German?
04:12 Well, no, she's not.
04:14 No?
04:15 No, she has a special assignment over in Frankfurt.
04:18 Oh, okay.
04:19 Working at Star Alliance, which is based out of Frankfurt.
04:24 And we found the great village of Mainz, actually.
04:29 So, it's about a three to four year stay we'll be there.
04:34 And her German is very fluent, of course.
04:37 Of course, I was open as an artist to go and experience and stretch out.
04:44 It's so close to great places like Basel.
04:48 You're often in Basel?
04:50 I've gone there, yeah, sure.
04:52 Yeah?
04:53 Yeah, absolutely.
04:54 What do you like about this city?
04:56 I like the art.
04:58 It seems to really support the art and the people seem to be very excited about that.
05:03 The architecture, of course.
05:05 It's all good.
05:08 Am I allowed to publish this?
05:11 Please do.
05:12 Because the people of Basel will be very grateful and very happy.
05:17 Oh, yeah.
05:18 And we'll see you next time in Basel.
05:20 You're in Basel also, at the fair?
05:23 I don't know if Julie's going to include me in the Basel fair.
05:26 But she went to the Cologne fair.
05:30 So, could be.
05:32 It could be a trans park in Basel.
05:34 That would be very nice.
05:37 Yeah.
05:38 I'm into creating this, so I'm very tired as well.
05:41 Oh, yeah.
05:44 This is all just very simple, you know, because you can't be drilling into the hotel rooms.
05:51 Construction of things also.
05:53 And with the very readily, kind of Joseph Boisi kind of like concept or philosophy of
06:00 using these kind of readily available materials.
06:03 This is construction material.
06:05 You know, this is copper tubing that you can buy at the lumber store.
06:09 So, it's all purchased here in New York at the hardware store, basically.
06:15 So, I think you made a plan for us.
06:17 Oh, absolutely.
06:19 It's hard to realize the whole setup.
06:27 And trying to incorporate music and certain aromas.
06:32 Trying to make a sensory, you know, sensory pod is what I call it.
06:37 So, and all sensories.
06:39 Smell, sight, physicality of being in a different space, right?
06:45 Displacing you from the hotel for a moment, right?
06:48 Putting you into this neutral zone.
06:50 This time when you go from point A to point B.
06:52 So, you feel like you're on a journey somewhere.
06:55 You walk out, you go, "Oh, yeah, I'm in a hotel."
06:57 For a minute, I was in the Frankfurt airport.
06:59 Or these ambiguous, very, these spaces are actually, you know, not any one place.
07:07 It can be many places, any place.
07:10 Anybody who's traveling, you know, who hasn't in our world, right?
07:14 It really mixes up the places.
07:16 At the end, you don't know where you are, how it has been applied.
07:20 It's just how you can, I don't know.
07:23 It was back in the '80s.
07:25 All the guys, some of the guys, breakfast the first month, first Saturday night in the gallery.
07:31 There's just people who knew.
07:33 And it was great because critics, artists, and anger artists were just not talking.
07:40 It just was shimmering.
07:44 [Indistinct chatter]