The Book of Rides to All the Ends of the Lines (BRAEL)
is a digi-centric, photo-textual, neodisciplinary performative urban epic unfolding on multiple platforms and straddling the literary universe, the photographic realm and the art world, through a number of specific engagements. Loosely started in 2019, put into action in extremely intentional and vociferous ways in 2020 all the way to the end of 2024–with the most intense engagements taking place from 2021-2023–the Book of RAELs consisted of my going to every single end of every single subway line within the New York City subway system. Photographs were taken AT the end of each of the lines as well as, to limited degrees, ON THE WAY to each of the lines. Texts were written at the ends as well, and a spectrum of performances put into action: from silent peerings to conversations, from limited-time whisperings to ritualistic readings. Drafts of the RAA (Ride As Art) Manifesto were composed, recited, whispered, shouted (granted, with few people around most of the time). I had planned to hit each end of the line once, but… I took the subway so often and so much, and loved the experience of the trek to the ends of the lines for so many reasons, that I ended up doing almost every single one twice, and many of them many many times more. It is organized on two axes: by each end of the line on the NYC subway system, and by several categories that allow the multiple threads of mediums to come together: PhotoNarrativity; PhotoQuiddity; PhotoCurationality; PhotoPerformativity; PhotoInstitutionality; PhotoTheography; and FotoPlayography. The entirety I see as an epic phroem–a photographically inclined prose poem, with the instantiations of each end of the line conceived as new genres/forms/objects I call Phroemas and Phroematiks, depending on the nature of the interaction with the audience. As literal (and humorous in that literality) as the title of the work is, it also most definitely (and obviously) points and invites figuratively to a metaphysical and philosophical reading/interpretation, with each part going beyond its literal meaning: The Rides… to Ahhhhlllll… the Ends… of ahhhhlllll Lines…
I have also… cheated: in two ways: 1/Although one of my criteria was to limit the photography to the end of the line itself–along with images from the train and inside the train from about two stops from the end of the line–I could often not resist and took, and included, images from inside the trains from, well, lots of stops before the end of the line. I also did some end-of-line to end-of-line scrolls (just a few, but might do more). 2/I have extended the initial time-frame to 2025-2027 (I thought I’d go one or two years, then liked it so much and accepted that it would go five years-ish–2019-2024). Additionally, I’ve also allowed myself to go back before 2019 to include select (only “select”) images/photographs and texts I had fashioned and created either at ends of lines or close to ends of lines, prior to the actual articulation of the project… because, well, why not, and, it allowed me to include really interesting pieces into the framework.
Photo- and text-centric, The Book of Rides to All the Ends of the Lines very specifically and rigorously intertwines singularly conceived dimensions of the following: Photography (distributed and quiddified in a host of ways), Text (literary prose and poems, as well as song lyrics, works-on-paper and the RAA manifesto), Performances (conversations, silences and whisperings, a-performative interactions and full-blown readations), Music/Sound, Conceptual/Relational Artworks (with pieces created at the end of the lines and directives and experiences for riders on their ways to the end of the lines), Artworks of the Participatory Kind–where all willing riders bring/do “the thing” at the end of the lines.
Initially, I had also purposely wanted to use my hand-held digital pro cameras, no flash and no tripods and total discreetness and total phoetic (photo-poetic) action, ambulation, and only do BW, but… the possibilities offered by the iPhones in terms of faster and more discrete stratagems prompted me to allow myself the usage starting in 2024 (in earlier experimental phases I had already done lots of iPhone image-taking in 2019), another reason for the time extension. I also ended up doing some select ‘heavier’ interactions and hope to do a few more–interiors, set-up and constructed images… Allowed myself to open up the cameric and photographic vista…
From 2020-2024, I engaged in and either finished or brought to almost-end, the following:
In Fall 2024 and Winter 2025, I decided to go a bit more public with the endeavor–it had all been quite secretive–and I’m hoping to have multiple manifestations of the total BRAEL–both in distributed ways, and in collected ways. Exhibitions. Performances. Installations. Publications–both digital and analog–along with Shares/Posts on social media.
Indeed, many parts of BRAEL can exist autonomously–the single or group image, the manifesto, the texts, the post or the print–and it is inevitable that particular mediums generate their own threads and exist in distributed ways across platforms, times, medium-centric containers… But it is as ONE GRAND PIECE and in the TOTAL FUSION that BRAEL has been conceived and exists: all together, the pieces intertwine to make a new genre, a new form, generating new interactions and rituals, a total, multi-medial, neodisciplinary, phroematic urban epic.