Situated on the calendar and in our psyches between the free-floating nightmares fueled by locked-down isolation and the Halloween urge to face up to our fears, David Bayusâ animated short film The Virion Transit inhabits a disturbing militarized zone between the past and the future. If itâs the present, heaven help us: Weâre in worse shape, and greater danger, than we thought.
From the first images of a solitary, masked-and-hyperventilating man on a trashed BART train hurtling through a tunnel to some prospective rural refuge, Bayus thrusts us into an unrelenting post-apocalyptic scenario that makes all those â70s movies set in gone-to-hell New York (i.e., The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) look like postcards from Shangri-La. Discarded newspapers (âItâs Comingâ) and BART signs (âToo lateâ / âItâs already hereâ) allude to an otherworldly menaceâa bug, perhaps, spread through the air?âwhile an actual bug scurries along the floor toward our lone rider.
In a few detailed black-and-white strokes, The Virion Transitâon view at the SoMa gallery Telematic Media Arts through Oct. 2âeloquently invokes last yearâs COVID fears of an invisible menace that can easily penetrate paltry human defenses. But letâs acknowledge the commuters as well as the germaphobes in the crowd: The grimy BART on view here provokes a visceral response thatâs akin to one weâve all felt at some time on public transit. (And I say that as a devotee of public transportation.)
David Bayus, still from ‘The Virion Transit,’ 2021.
COVID allusions aside, Bayusâs 13-minute tour de force will give you the creeps, and no amount of bite-sized candy bars can smooth or dull its harrowing power. Perhaps the San Francisco artistâs in-person conversation with curator, composer, critic and Telematic director Clark Buckner this Saturday, Sept. 25 at 2 p.m. (streaming online as well) will offer some comfort, but I wouldnât count on it.
In his artist statement, Bayus traces his inspiration for The Virion Transit to the notion of the Fisher King. I respond less to that intellectual framing than to the threatening creatures sharing the train car, who make the beasts that plague the protagonist of David Cronenbergâs Naked Lunch adaptation seem cuddly. If hell is other people, as Sartre declared, what is a place without other people called?
Bayus brings a great deal of thought, vision, labor (he did all the animation himself, as well as the exceedingly effective sound effects and music) and art to bear in The Virion Transit. What sticks with me, though, and will haunt me past Halloween and beyond the pandemic, presuming it has a finite end, is the horror.
âThe Virion Transitâ is on view at Telematic Media Arts (323 10th St., San Francisco) through Oct. 2. Artist David Bayus will be in conversation with Clark Buckner on Saturday, Sept. 25, 2â4pm. Details here.
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