I Went for a Drive

I’m going to try something a little different this time — I’m not going to even begin to try to explain what it is I’m doing. There are a lot of different avenues I’ve pursued over the last 6 months, but none of that matter any more because want I want to focus on is a drive.

Last year I found myself in the unfortunate position of having to travel back and forth between Toronto and Montreal for medical reasons—in case you’re wondering, I’m fine now, and I appreciate your concern. I had to get an MRI done, and that prompted the first piece of work which found it’s way creeping back into my thesis again and again. I was on the MRI bed, uncomfortable and anxious, and I was receiving what I thought were ridiculous instructions to close my eyes and look forward at the same time. On the train ride back to Toronto, I decided to write about this experience, about what I saw with my eyes closed, what I tried to visualize to keep my eyes from moving, and at the same time I decided to record the country side in slow-motion. I think it’s significant that these two actions happened simultaneously, but I don’t know how yet.

Three weeks before this, feeling mostly anxious and frustrated, which is my default setting, Donald asked me what I would do, right this moment, to advance my thesis. I had two answers. One, I could go for a 24 hour drive. He asked me why, and I said I don’t know, but that there’s something there. Two, I could interview people and have them document what their mind conjured when reading a piece of literature. The second one was more in line with what I had been pursuing up to that point.

I chose the first one.

I got in my car and drove for 2 days straight, with only the vaguest destination in mind. I wanted to see how far north I could drive before the roads end. I didn’t quite make it on the first day, and the second day I had to give up because of a snow storm. I got as far as a ferry crossing, which wasn’t in service this time of season—a dead end, but not the one I hoped for, as the road continued beyond the river.

But looking back on this drive, I realized the documentation of the journey was more fruitful than the journey itself. A lot of the photos are perfectly average, if not blurry and out of focus, but they captured the journey. That’s what the drive felt like, something that started sharp and focused, but over the course of the next 24 hour grew more and more dangerous and ill defined. I had a vision in mind when I left, and I came back confused and hopeless.

Then I got sick, and suddenly I was on a train, writing about physics and math and imaginary gates and creepy radio towers, while simultaneously pressing my iphone against the window and recording landscapes.

And here’s the part where I get a little saccharine or sentimental, and also the part which I’ve avoided talking about because I’m embarrassed by it. When I’m driving, I feel like my mind is free. All of my best ideas have come to me in the car. And not just in cars, but trains and boats and bikes or on a run. Any time my body is propelled forward, it feels like my mind is liberated. So now I’m in this strange situation where what started as a tool for creativity is now the focus of my creative energy.

6 weeks ago, I presented 6 images and three videos. All of these are from the same drive, done 7 times over 7 days. And I need to say that I’d gone on many more drives than this, again as tool to help me think, to visualize what it is I wanted to actually document. And so now there’s a feedback loop where I’m driving to figure out how best to record my drives.

Which bring us to why is this even important? Why all of this work? Well, I’m not going to answer that, because if I had an answer then I would be close to finishing my thesis, but I do want to touch upon time and memory.

One thing is never enough for me. Everything I’ve done so far has been in series. The 24 hour drive shows 1 photo from each hour until I reach the end. The train video is always shown along side the stories I wrote on that train. The 7 drives were filmed with 2 cameras at 3 different speeds. These images of the 7 drives are comprised of 4000 photos each, compressed into one frame. I’m playing with time, compressing and stretching it because that’s how my mind perceives these events. As I watch the landscape, I don’t see any one of those three videos or any series of images. I see something in between.

And so I’ve found myself in a realm of subjectivity, in an intangible space. Which, considering I started with an infinite library and impossible spaces, doesn’t seem too far off. If you wanted to encapsulate this work neatly, you could say it’s about capturing that intangible space, about capturing the flow of time across that space, something I don’t think many traditional rendering or documentation techniques do very effectively. I’ve found myself dabbling in art, which is very, very unfamiliar territory for me, because I’ve found other avenues stifling. Memory is only meaningful with respect to time, and so much architecture, be it building, drawing or discourse, is effectively devoid of both. That’s about as polemic as you’ll ever hear me get, because in the end, I went on these drives simply because I enjoy it.


Marco Chimienti
04.03.17