zones of immersion
TTC Union Station, 2007-2015. Toronto, Ontario.
This work is so long it’s impossible to take in at one gaze.
It is visible from two sides.
On the platform side, it’s possible to walk right up to the work – but only isolated tableaus are available for viewing.
On the track side, while you think you can see the entire expanse of the mural, and the train track gives you some mandatory distance from its glass panels, you are often less than 12’ away from an artwork which is over 500’ long. Walking the full length of the terminal, the work is visible only in the intervals between the arrival and departure of trains. At rush-hours, this is less than every 5 minutes.
This time-bracketed viewing of the artwork, as well as its intimate contemplation of our contemporary urban human condition, mirrors and channels the structure and meaning of Charles Dickens composed epic novels, made in intimate sections for his daily 19th century newspaper readership.
Although the project is conceived as a whole (this work has the overall sweep of an entire city block and can be seen as a continuously unfolding ribbon), the title zones of immersion implies that seeing the work close up is a both a necessity and an affordance, allowing a charged intimacy in this public space – a pathos rarely available in public art.
The expression of psyche in public space can give public art a purpose greater than spectacle or decoration. This work presents the unvarnished witnessing of our human dwelling – which speaks of our collective separateness. (I feel a kinship here with Daumier’s Third Class Carriage, and Henry Moore’s wartime subway drawings). The unwritten code of the subway gaze, which says ‘look down/look away’, is challenged as we see ourselves in the work, through drawings and reflections. This window into our contemporary isolation offers faces and body language, blurred and revealed poetic writings from my journal entries, and rhythms of colour that punctuate the ribboned expanse.
I think of the formal structure of this mural as someplace between a graphic novel and a film, with compelling vignettes which blend or slide from frame to frame.
For daily viewers, who rarely, if ever, wait for a train from exactly the same place on the platform, it’s possible to see a slightly different slice of the overall composition daily.
Zones of Immersion: Stuart Reid
a film by Boja Vasic
Zones of Immersion is a captivating view into the world of artist Stuart Reid during the production of his monumental 500-foot glass wall for Toronto’s Union Station. Reid is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work spans painting, drawing, stained glass, poetry and architecture. His poetic writing is layered into and across this massive, heartfelt artwork – a paean to the 65 million passengers – around 200,000 each day – who pass through Union Station, Toronto’s main public transportation hub.
This film documents the artist’s existential dive into the ‘transit’ experience – people, faces, gestures, postures, activities, the blur of passing trains. The daily ritual of commuting, of coming and going, inhabits a space of suspension between worlds. Observing this intersection between public and private worlds, the artist offers us a wealth of contemplative, emotive, sensory experiences and thoughts that open up our consciousness of self and other.
slicing through the clay of the earth’s first skin
steel, rail and electric lines
going from going to
slicing through time and distance
darkness and light
station by station
releasing us into the city’s fabric
stop by stop
after a days labour
taking us home
- stuart reid
cinematography/editing BOJA VASIC
producer DOREEN BALABANOFF
starring STUART REID
music composer NOAH REID
music production NOAH REID & JACOB KADAR-PENNER
sound editor KELLY MITCHELL
photography TONI HAFKENSCHEID, THEA REID
additional camera MATT BEECROFT, THEO SKUDRA