During the closure period due to the pandemic, a new spatial concept was created in the DB Museum in which the 20-minute video installation "Locomotive" created by the two artists Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller is shown. In three film sequences running side by side at the same time, museum visitors are taken on a gripping journey through dark tunnels and over dizzyingly high bridges. For this, Girardet and Müller, who have been working on their joint cinematic work since 1999, have collected railway scenes from hundreds of feature films, sifted through them and reassembled them. "Locomotive" shows how closely the medium of film and the world of railways are connected and delights cineastes, railway fans and art lovers alike.
In their video artwork, Christoph Girardet and Matthias Müller were inspired by the causal connection between cinema and railroad: it is well known that the very first film, a 55-second long strip by the Lumière brothers from 1895, shows the arrival of a train at the station of the Southern French town of La Ciotat. A year later, the German film pioneers Max and Emil Skladanowsky also captured a train arriving at a station on celluloid. Since then, the railway has become a film motif countless times. For Locomotive, scenes from hundreds of movies were brought together and recompiled. Girardet and Müller deconstruct typical railway scenes and reassemble them into a tryptichon. In the three films that run side by side and interact artistically at the same time, viewers are taken on a trip through dark tunnels and over dizzying bridges. Travelers look longingly out of train windows, wait on platforms or wander through the nightly sleeping car corridors. The side-by-side scenes appeal to one's own experience or create completely new associations. Underlaid with the soundtrack by Dirk Schaefer, which perfectly reflects the mood and dynamics of the work, Girardet and Müller have created a hypnotic train trip through film history, which continues to have an effect even after the film has ended. As one reviewer wrote, “Hypnosis goes on. We don't wake up. "
