HowardTransient 2010 Films Spotlight NY Cabbies
Real Crash- Looking at the Financial System and the War Drive:
Transient 2010, in NY Cabs this week
This week, Amir Baradaran broadcasts his short films, Transient 2010, shown on Taxi TV in yellow cabs, from September 9th through 15th. This quick films should be jarring taxi passengers and making them think for New York City fashion week.
There is a wide spectrum of driver's faces in the films, some black or brown, and some white. The drivers are each shown reacting to their world and traffic, on Taxi TV. The oddity is that Taxi TV is meant to divert and entertain the passenger, when suddenly, the passenger is watching a film of the face and body of the cab driver, probably the last thing that they want to see. In the films, the viewer sees the tension in the driver's face because cabbies drive 12-hour days and have difficulty making rest stops. The viewer is confronted with the hard-working driver, though in a non-threatening way.
Although the yellow cab is a symbol of New York City, drivers are quite anonymous people, often from third-world countries. Half of the drivers are Muslim or from Muslim-backgrounds. Many live in neighborhoods such as Harlem, Jamaica, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, from which they go to their work in posh districts of downtown Manhattan. The drivers are further separated from passengers by a Plexiglas partition, meant to protect them, but also serving to enforce their isolation. Baradaran used a hand-held camera to take basic moving shots of the driver, focusing on the gaze of the driver as seen reflected in the rear view mirror and at the passenger as well as traffic.
The Transient 2010 films are typical of Baradaran's work, focusing on barriers and the ephemeral, while working to get the viewer to overcome these barriers. Suddenly, the taxi cab which is an in-between place used for travel becomes an art exhibition space. The films have a voyeur aspect to them, as the viewer is drawn into the private world of the taxi driver. The faces of the drivers express the dramas involved in staying awake during a long working day, but also show happiness to get a new passenger, or a personal smile. A fascinating short film shows a woman driver, herself an invader in the nearly all-male profession. Different drivers are identified because they wear no hat, or wear headgear from baseball caps to Sikh turbans.
Eventually these films may be exhibited in a museum space, but for now they can be seen in the cramped space of the back of a cab. Amir Baradaran is a New York-based artist. He was born in Iran, and was raised in Montreal, Canada. For more information on Baradaran and his work, please go to http://amirbaradaran.com.
