STEFANI BYRD

Digital Media + Interactive Public Art

HERE THERE

Caroline Louise Miller, Stefani Byrd, and Alarm Will Sound Ensemble

Immersive Media Installation (3-Channel 4K Video, 4.1 Surround Sound, and 2-Channel Parabolic Dome Speaker Audio)

2020 - 2024

Here There is an immersive multimedia installation exploring complex historical relationships among labor, industrial infrastructure, and collective memory through an examination of three significant Transcontinental Railroad sites in Northern California: Donner Pass, Bloomer Cut, and Roseville Train Yard. The project weaves together film spanning both coasts, interviews with experts, and a chamber orchestra score. Here There creates a dance between the everyday and the epic, the industrial and scenic, noise and silence.

In this work, the origin story of the Transcontinental Railroad reexamines aspects of American history that are overlooked, particularly the experience of the worker, both past and present. Here There does not take the perspective of history told through the lens of “great men”—such as the big four railroad barons. Instead it focuses on canonically marginalized communities such as the pre-contact indigenous Martis, the Maidu tribe, Chinese railroad workers, Pacific Fruit Express ice house laborers, and contemporary unionized railroad crews. The project disrupts the “Golden West” national narrative, reframing the mythos of the Transcontinental Railroad as a metaphor for colonialism and capitalism in America. It also engages how the technologies of film and locomotion reshaped our relationship to both time and space, expanding us beyond our embodied sensorial experience of the world.

The work is a collaboration between composer Caroline Louise Miller, visual artist Stefani Byrd, and world-renowned contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound.

Featuring interviews with Dr. Gordon H. Chang, History Professor at Stanford University and author of The Ghosts of Gold Mountain and Dan Stone, retired train conductor of over 30 years from the DeButts Switch Yard in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Stone is also a long time friend and former colleague of project lead Stefani Byrd’s deceased father, J. Byrd.

In chapter one of the trilogy, the camera takes a point of view trek through the Donner Pass Tunnels in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California which was once a pivotal portion of the Transcontinental Railroad. This site is layered with the marking of three distinct communities over thousands of years: the Martis people, Chinese railroad workers, and present day graffiti writers. Each group has had a distinct relationship to the land and disparate their reason for mark making. Visual traces from each group become representative of stages of capitalistic development in America from pre-capitalism and indigenous autonomy, the rise of monopoly capitalism through the Industrialization process, and current day late capitalism and its ramifications.

This chapter of the project weaves together stereoscopic photography – the virtual reality of its time – alongside contemporary drone footage and satellite imagery. This serves as a form of way-finding in order experience a singular place across time and from multiple perspectives. The work explores both the historical significance of the Donner Pass Tunnels and how available technology has informed how we see and understand it.

“Too often American history is presented as a celebration of great people, particularly great men, presidents, generals. Working people are often left out of the story and certainly people of color in the past are long overdue their recognition.”

— Dr. Gordon Chang

CHAPTER 2: BLOOMER CUT

Chapter two of the trilogy focuses on Bloomer Cut, a Transcontinental Railroad site located at the edge of a suburban neighborhood in Auburn, California. When completed in 1864, this location was considered the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. This site is marked by a small sign and is still an active line, one of the few Transcontinental Railroad sites to survive to present day. The sequence is filmed as an embodied phantom walk through the woods to a once revered feat of human engineering, presented alongside archival film and photographs related to the history of the region.

Bloomer Cut is a site containing entangled histories of extraction and relocation of resources, lands, and people. Auburn originated as a gold mining camp which later evolved into a town with the necessary businesses and services to support the miners in the region. After gold was extracted from the land by miners, it was weighed and purchased by bankers such as the newly formed Wells Fargo group who relocated that wealth to other markets.

Happening concurrently was the decimation of the indigenous population from diseases like smallpox, measles, and financially motivated genocide sponsored by the state of California. Through legislation like the Homestead Act, lands were taken from Indigenous peoples and redistributed from the Federal government to settlers. Many tribes are at present still fighting in the courts for their land and legal recognition, including the Maidu (MY-doo) whose original homelands include what is now known as Placer County.

This chapter explores the forces of American Capitalism and its visible impact on the landscape that was literally reshaped in service to miners, railroads, and the influx of white settlers. The work takes a “past as present” perspective in the examination of the outcomes of Settler Colonialism and Industrialization that are embedded in what appears to be an innocuous suburban neighborhood in Northern California.

“When you work at the railroad, there’s black and there’s white and there’s gray and gray is the area that they wanted you to work in.”

— Dan Stone

CHAPTER 3: ROSEVILLE

Chapter Three of the triptych focuses on the J.R. Davis Yard in Roseville, California which is the largest railroad yard in the Western United States. The city of Roseville owes its existence to trains, as it evolved out of the lines of the Transcontinental Railroad. This portion of Here There also focuses on the experiences of more contemporary railroad workers and how the rail lines continue to shape the United States.

In the 1910s, innovations such as ice filled cars operated by the now defunct Pacific Fruit Express made it possible to ship produce from California to the rest of the country. The ability to quickly transport perishables to Middle America supported the influx of larger populations in less bountiful regions. Ice cars were later replaced by refrigerated cars that are still utilized today. The film features archival photographs and records from the Pacific Fruit Express workers who maintained the refrigerated cars. These workers attempted to form the United Railway Icemen’s Union in the 1930s to fight for higher wages, but it was squashed due to pressure from company supervisors.

The film also explores the hazards of the railroads, not just to rail workers but to local citizens. In 1973, an explosion on the Roseville yard caused destruction to local communities and multiple injuries. A railcar caught fire and detonated ammunition being shipped to the Vietnam War. These past events echo the 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio and the continued shortcomings in railroad safety and oversight.

The chapter also mixes film from three distinct perspectives: the point of view of a moving train, a tracking shot of the railroad filmed from a moving car, and aerial drone footage of the sprawling rail yard. The footage shot from the train’s perspective comes from the Thomas Edison film archive and is what’s called a phantom ride. These are pre-narrative films made by strapping the camera directly to the front of a moving train. This amalgam of camera perspectives demonstrate how our collective relationship to the railroad has evolved and how new technologies continue to reshape our own understanding of time and space.

BUMPER - BENCHING

The term 'benching' was coined in New York in the 1970s by graffiti writers. The bench is a place people gather to admire the painting on subway cars or freight trains. This bumper, a mini-chapter between films, is a single shot of a passing train and the graffiti adorning various cars. The objective for freight graffiti artists is for their work to travel across the country, and to reach a broad audience. The greater their visibility, the greater their reputation as an artist. Though graffiti remains an illegal activity, many rail yards have come to a truce with writers and will not remove it (an expensive and laborious process) as long as important information such as car numbers remain visible. There is an unwritten code among writers to follow these rules, remain out of sight, and to not impede the rail workers, who in turn overlook their presence.

PROJECT CREDITS

ORIGINAL SCORE by Caroline Louise Miller

CINEMATOGRAPHY and EDITING by Stefani Byrd

ORIGINAL SCORE PERFORMED by ALARM WILL SOUND:

ALARM WILL SOUND are

Miles Brown, Michael Clayville, Stefan Freund, Michael Harley, Erin Lesser, Bill Kalinkos, Laura Weiner, Tim Leopold, John Orfe, Christa Robinson, Matt Smallcomb, Elisabeth Stimpert, Courtney Orlando, Alan Pierson, Gavin Chuck, Jason Varvaro, Peter Ferry, Annie Toth, Michael Clayville, Tracey Mendez, Chihiro Shibayama

EXHIBITION TEAM

CATALOG DESIGN by Madison Creech

COPY EDITING by Thomas Mattos

EXHIBITION DESIGN SUPPORT by Keltsey McKoy

SPECIAL THANKS

Roseville Historical Society

Donner Summit Historical Society

Stanford University Library and Special Collections

California State Railroad Museum Library

Dr. Gordon Chang

Dan Stone

CAB Gallery