Ten Miles of Track in One Day (excerpt)

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

5760 x 1080 pixel; Ten-minute video, infinite loop; 2021

From 1863 – 1869, Central Pacific Railroad Company employed thousands of emigrant Chinese as manual laborers to construct the western half of the Pacific railway, the first transcontinental railroad that bridged east and west coasts of the United States, dramatically reducing travel times and unifying the country. Collectively these “railroad Chinese” laid 690 miles of tracks toiling through harsh conditions with low pay. Historical records rarely identified these twenty thousand workers. Railroad payrolls have a scant list of their names, often anglicized. The video, which spirals around viewers as a three-channel projection onto 36 pillars, memorializes these silent workers who are the ancestors of many of today’s Chinese Americans. The phenakistoscope patterns interlock over a hundred names that scholars have been able to recover with the landscape from Sacramento, California to Promontory, Utah where the workers labored.