LANYC

HD Film Installation
45 mins
6 balanced audio outputs
Sound composition and concept by William Saunders

LANYC is a dreamlike, hypnotic film drawn from footage taken on a 4 day train journey between Los Angeles and New York. Through the superimposition of this footage, the film presents a circular journey that neither starts nor ends in either city. Instead it creates and inhabits a remarkably layered depiction of the vast offerings of the transamerican landscape.

„I offer you a journey without direction, uncertainty and no sweet conclusion.“

Derek Jarman – The Garden (1990)

A mesmerizing rhythm of slow-but-steady change, juxtaposed with carefully considered quick cuts, the film offers a kind of window through which one’s gaze can wander freely. Buildings become dream factories; passing-by nature dissolves into abstract shapes and lines; a path leads to a windmill in the skies. 

Occasional fragments of dialogue break up the comforting sound of metal wheels on tracks and the train’s horn. They form a broken commentary, that in pointedly subtle ways, provokes a contemplation of the evocative absence of clear meaning.
Specially commissioned 5.1 surround sound composition by Will Saunders.