David Crawford
Riverside, California, USA, (1970)

Stop Motion Studies - Series 8 (2003)
"SMS-Tokyo" is a 2003 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for its Turbulence Web site. It was made possible by a grant from the LEF Foundation.


The series of “microfilms” that make up the Stop Motion Studies combine a subtle set of aspects of human interactions that take place in the places of casual confluence and forced physical proximity between strangers that are the carriages and underground stations in large cities (all of the images were taken in the Tokyo underground in October 2003). Composed by some fixed photographs that are automatically sequenced at random (both in order and in duration) in a never-ending succession, these series take a look, as the author himself claims, at the "small space between the photogram and the image in movement". In this non-linear re-animation of moments that have been registered in photographs and in its retracting (and falsely repetitive) effect, there is an immense spectrum of scowls, expressions and gestures of people that casually share the same transit time. Although in any other context, the physical proximity between two people would indicate a certain intentionality between them to establish an interaction, the normal logic that organises and gives meaning to physical proximities is broken down in the usually crowded underground train carriages. Because the separation that delimits personal space is trespassed here, it seems inevitable, as a form of compensation, that the faces should reveal several gestures of distance. They thus try to defend the comfort of remaining alone even if they are in a crowded space. Their gazes often very forcefully seek to escape from any focussing on the person in front of them in order to avoid undesired interactions. A resistance that is required to be corresponded and if this does not occur, is uncomfortable, more intimidating even when it is a camera that, like in this case, dares to meet the gaze.