The train, an apparatus for motion, creates a struggle for the artist attempting to capture its plasticity.  An object of speed, the static representation of the train seems to defy its tempo-spatial essence.  Most easily represented by a succession of frames, film historically is the prized capturer of the train as its nature is most kind and interested in the exhibition of movement.  But for the artist wishing to demonstrate the train’s kinetics in a still-medium (such as sculpture or painting), this succession of images must be compressed and concentrated into a singular moment where movement can only be implied.  In Duchamp’s Cubist inspired “Nu (esquisse), jeune homme triste dans un train” he uses principles of multiplicity to demonstrate the mechano-morphic movements of the train and its passenger.  The dynamics of the scene are evoked through a stuttering of overlapping figures, which dissolve and translate the subject in a figurative time.

On the IIT campus, Duchampian space is reimagined as Architecture. Situated next to the elevated railway, the building mimics the train’s mechanical dynamism similar to the French artist’s painting. The historic 24 foot grid system of the IIT campus impressions itself on the object, reticulating and quantifying its otherwise ambiguous form.  Instead of being fundamental to the architecture like in a Miesian scheme, here the grid demonstrates an indifference to it.  For Mies the grid was a basic axiom, but here it becomes a textual element of the site and its history.  The grid is not the positive organizer and generator anymore, but the negative interval.