PROGRAM
GPC STREAMS (#5) Next Stop
When James Watt improved the steam engine in 1776, he likely did not anticipate that it would become an emblem of a future geological era now referred to as the Anthropocene. Adapted for movement on steel rails that spanned vast distances, the steam engine initiated a radical transformation of space and time, significantly influencing life, production, and the very soil beneath it. Once essential for the circulation of people and goods, large portions of the railway system eventually became obsolete, outpaced by more profitable modes of transportation and the shifting locations of extractive sites (maps of abandoned railways are a telling reminder of these ruins). And yet, even today, the railway still holds the promise of “prosperity,” exemplified by the New Silk Road initiative: an ambitious infrastructure project set to establish the fastest rail link across Eurasia, representing a massive effort to further optimize globalization and boost economic profit
The temporal paradox between obsolescence and promise, ruin and construction, as well as the maintenance of a system and its sabotage, becomes evident through the three films that compose Next Stop, whose protagonists are railways systems in Austria, Spain, South Caucasus, and Caspian regions. From fragmented screen tales to experimental documentaries and meditative explorations, each work follows steel lines that demonstrate their embeddedness in the landscape, the political context, the economic influxes, and the labor around them. Through three distinct aesthetic and narrative approaches, Next Stop aims to attend to that which the train implies, not only in material, historical, or sociopolitical terms but also in its specific form of motion and vision.
With works by Greta Alfaro, Tekla Aslanishvili, Lisa Truttmann
Curated by Enar de Dios Rodríguez
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GPC ONLINE SCREEN
GPC STREAMS (#5) Next Stop
Online film screening
- , each evening from 21:00 until 22:51 (in your timezone)
When James Watt improved the steam engine in 1776, he likely did not anticipate that it would become an emblem of a future geological era now referred to as the Anthropocene. Adapted for movement on steel rails that spanned vast distances, the steam engine initiated a radical transformation of space and time, significantly influencing life, production, and the very soil beneath it. Once essential for the circulation of people and goods, large portions of the railway system eventually became obsolete, outpaced by more profitable modes of transportation and the shifting locations of extractive sites (maps of abandoned railways are a telling reminder of these ruins). And yet, even today, the railway still holds the promise of “prosperity,” exemplified by the New Silk Road initiative: an ambitious infrastructure project set to establish the fastest rail link across Eurasia, representing a massive effort to further optimize globalization and boost economic profit
The temporal paradox between obsolescence and promise, ruin and construction, as well as the maintenance of a system and its sabotage, becomes evident through the three films that compose Next Stop, whose protagonists are railways systems in Austria, Spain, South Caucasus, and Caspian regions. From fragmented screen tales to experimental documentaries and meditative explorations, each work follows steel lines that demonstrate their embeddedness in the landscape, the political context, the economic influxes, and the labor around them. Through three distinct aesthetic and narrative approaches, Next Stop aims to attend to that which the train implies, not only in material, historical, or sociopolitical terms but also in its specific form of motion and vision.
With works by Greta Alfaro, Tekla Aslanishvili, Lisa Truttmann
Curated by Enar de Dios Rodríguez
