ABSTRACT

Morrison's Every Stop on the F Train is a short film with one of the greatest stars in the United States – Manhattan. As an audiovisual essay, this work does not illustrate or propel a distinct philosophical treatise as it is rather a constructive phenomenological provocation. Every Stop on the F-Train deals with the position of the mind as immersed (or rather manifested) in sound, vision, time, and place, which can be researched here with the unique capacities of film. Playful but also rigorous, machinic but also of humble elegance, this film reworks the linked concepts of motion pictures and locomotion. It destabilizes unquestioned notions of the viewer, content, direction, and directing, thereby harnessing the deeper potential of the medium.

KEYWORDS

space, perspective, tunnel, mass transit

I read, no, I rather screen the short film Every Stop on the F-Train here in a slightly personal manner. My point of departure is an actual ride on the actual F-train in Manhattan in the spring of 2013. I was in New York for the second time – curious, hungry, a bit lost but nevertheless rubbernecking with glee and awe. I came for a graduate conference at CUNY, and, also being a scholar of what is known as American Studies in Germany, I was, in fact, many things: tourist, investigator, customer, and (aged) fanboy.

Every accumulation of people, materials, signs, and rhythms challenges the outsider's mind. The subway is the most urban and, I would argue, the most enigmatic and startling machines of the modern city. While only really big cities have a subway system, its use is not associated with something very prestigious, but it is irritatingly normal, like faucets and electricity. Like those resources, the subway is something that becomes relevant when it is out of order or somewhat suspended. Its effective exploitation depends on a certain amount of assess-ability (but also accessibility) and its individual user's literacy of maps and abstract charts. For me, it depended on Josef, my generous city guide, who could identify approaching redirected trains by the people who were waiting for it. Not only does Morrison's film (like Josef) unfold how eerie and mysterious a seemingly mundane or even boring conveyance actually is, Every Stop on the F-Train also reflects on film as a medium or (self-paced?) tool for such an unfolding of the expanse of an object – and of the definitions by which it normally goes.