index

video

see video streaming in its entirety

 

A Bold Line - Back and Forth - Bicycling Madison Avenue, New York 2006

two channel DVD, 6 min (with traffic 4:35 min., against traffic 5:30 min)

see video streaming in its entirety



In this video I try to strictly follow the line and bicycle the bold line that divides the bus lane from the regular lanes on Madison Avenue between 42nd and 59th street, a one way street. The camera is suspended on a metal stick of about 4 meters, a rather heavy item that makes it difficult to balance while riding (with and against the traffic) mostly without holding the handlebar. This performance/video comes with a good bit of danger since the unusually heavy side wind and the heavy stick make me rather unstable confronted with the ruthless Madison Avenue Friday afternoon traffic. But due to the limited camera view the street danger is less visible than in other bicycling pieces where I also film while riding against the oncoming traffic. This creates a certain discrepancy between a rather scary bicycle/filming performance and the telescopic visual result of a flying-horse’s view.


I wasn't stopped by surprised police cars, though they were passing me on my passage. The suspended camera stick refers also to the many regulatory police views across the city as well as the antenna of mobile news stations. It also produced some poetic bird’s perspective with unusual images of Manhattan and me navigating common waters in strange ways.


Last but not least, I love modernism and its obsessions with straight lines and grids of which New York is a monument. Street lines are interfacing traffic and regulate our behavior. Reading the city practically against its grain is exciting and demands quite some acrobatic discipline and courage (or reckless madness - if you want to accuse me as some people do) to suppress common sense usage. Riding with this film/camera/stick along the modernist line made me think also of the famous inversed bicycle wheel on a chair, which was displayed on the DADA show just a two blocks away where I performed. The camera substitutes for the chair since it is the replacement of the beholder usually sitting on a chair. You have to imagine Duchamps' piece again hitting the road, or Mad-is-on Avenue, melting the two wheel bicycle into a mono wheel.


Let me add two comments by friends: Adrian Notz. Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, told me that the camera extension stick reminded him of a painting brush drawing the line while bicycling. Carly Busta wrote me: " the stripe abstracts the space as though it was a marker on a film reel, and the perspective makes it seem as though you are this singular man in a very large world running like a hovercraft above it. The space created is bizarre and it almost feels like a structural film or something."

Rainer Ganahl, NYC
www.ganahl.info

 

left - going 4:35 min right -returning 5:30 min see stills below

left - going 4:35 min right -returning 5:30 min see stills below

 

return to top

see video streaming in its entirety