"Different Trains," Different Worlds, 1939 to1941

Background painting "Athanor" by Anselm Kiefer (German, born 1945), a painting of the Honor Courtyard of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, the seat of  the Nazi government. Kiefer uses art to confront the wounds left to his homeland by Hitler's regime, like Steve Reich uses music and Beatriz Caravaggio uses  film. A photo doesn't do the painting justice, but it's amazing to view it up close and see how it complements "Different Trains."

My friend Teddy and I trekked to the Toledo Museum of Art on a cold, snowy, gray day to see a multimedia video called Different Trains.  We were enticed by the description in our latest TMA quarterly magazine.

Beatriz Caravaggio, by Pablo Requejo

The film, by Spanish filmmaker Beatriz Caravaggio, visualizes and interprets a musical score by minimalist composer Steve Reich. The music is performed by the famed Kronos Quartet. Caravaggio synchronized the visuals to the music, thus giving Reich's composition "a new visual life." This juxtaposition is in itself curious and fascinating. The museum calls it "a multimedia art installation."  I learn something new every day.

Reich's score, in three movements for string quartet and recorded voice, is based on the many train trips he made between New York and Los Angeles in the period 1939 to 1942 to visit his divorced parents.

As an adult, Reich, who is Jewish, came to realize that he might have been on different trains during these years if he had lived in Europe. He might have been on one of the deportation trains that took innocent Jewish prisoners to concentration camps. A sobering reality. The realization impels the music, which Reich calls a "music documentary."

Steve Reich in front of  scene from
Caravaggio's film. Photo Jeffrey Herman

I learned this from reading the large poster at the entrance to the Canaday gallery. I'm glad I read it before seeing the film, or I'm not sure I would have understood the seemingly repetitious scenes running like a train on three connected screens before our eyes. 

From time to time, between disjointed sounds, train sounds, and electronic sounds, an emotionless voice, dispassionate, insistent, intones the names of cities and dates. New York. Chicago. Los Angeles. New York. 1939. 1942. 1939. 1941. 

It takes some knowledge beforehand to realize that Reich is referencing World War II and the years Hitler invaded Poland and other European countries. The years of the Holocaust.

At first the train rides traverse an American landscape of big cities, rural farms, fields of grain, forests and mountains, urban landscapes, pretty frames, quickly passed, but familiar, comforting. This is Reich's first movement. The images fit the music.

These train rides across America crescendo into achingly tragic images of Jewish prisoners being herded by Nazi soldiers onto a different kind of train, the deportation trains that took them to Auschwitz and Nazi concentration camps during the same period. 1939. 1940. 1941. 1942.

The archival image are real, gritty, profoundly sad, gathered and assembled by filmmaker Caravaggio to fit the music.  Men, women and children, holding hands, holding worn suitcases or bundles of belongings, bewildered, having no idea what's happening, no idea of their fate. The Nazi soldiers slam shut the steel doors of the overcrowded cattle cars, make sure they are locked, step back, satisfied. The archival images of  prisoners waving hesitantly from the trains bring tears. One-way journeys. No exit. No return. The spector of death. The end of innocence. Shaved and tatooed with numbers on their arms when they get to a destination they could never imagine. The reality is shattering. This is Reich's second movement, the heart of the story.

The third movement, and the film's last chapter, focuses on the end of the war. Sounds and images of doubt and anxiety. A dark, post-war urban landscape that had passed through the horrors of genocide. It is haunted by agonizing memories of  the death and destruction committed by the Nazi regime.

I would advise anyone going to see the film to read up on it before you go. Read the poster outside the gallery before going in, which helps to ground you in what you are hearing and viewing. For me, it wasn't until after the film, though, when I did a little research about Reich and his music, and Caravaggio and her use of archival images, that the "art installation" made more sense, had more meaning.

On the other hand, my approach to this kind of art, to new art forms, really, is maybe too intellectual. I have been accused of that! So no matter how you approach this film, music and performance art you will find it fascinating. The multimedia creation by Reich, Caravaggio, and Kronos is literally and figuratively a moving memorial to the victims of the Holocaust (Steve Sloan, City Paper, Feb. 2019).  At a time when so many survivors are dying, the last who can tell the story, Different Trains reminds us that we must never forget what happened during those dark years. 1939. 1940. 1941. 1942.

Some sources:
Steven Sloan, "Different Trains: Reich & Caravaggio's Holocaust Memorial," City Paper, Feb.2019.
On Steve Reich, Different Trains, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Reich.
On Beatriz Caravaggio, https://www.museobilbao.com/in/exposiciones/different-trains-259.
S.Reich,  http://www.haydockmusic.com/music_essays/steve_reich_different_trains_part_one.html.