The Railway Walk

The Railway Walk
2024
Performance, single channel video, 07’21”

A performance prompted by news of a friend’s death. Walking through the forest with no destination, Yamaguchi came upon a railway track and kept walking, now on the rails. The track permits no straying.  A body walking the rails is led onward in a direction fixed in advance. By contrast, the forest invites wandering. Between these opposing forces, his body presses forward under tension. The anthropologist Tim Ingold argues that, under modernity, people have been moved from wayfaring — proceeding along a path — to transport, carried from point to point. Walking the railway line, Yamaguchi stands on the boundary line between the two. On his own two feet, he is at the same time being carried by something. This doubleness is recorded as a moving image that travels in a single direction.

SCREENINGS

2025 Silent Interference / Turtle chamber project, Taiwan

2024 Hazama Visual Arts Festival / Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin, Germany