Culture

Turning Subway Rides Into Performance Art

A series at the New York Transit Museum invites artists to make work inspired by the city’s trains and buses.
A member of WAFFLE NYC performs on a train in 2014.AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews

Twice a year, the New York Transit Museum—housed in a decommissioned station in Brooklyn—hosts an evening of site-specific performances and installations that draw inspiration from the city’s web of bus, train, and subway lines. Previous iterations of PLATFORM: Creative Musings on Mass Transit have featured gifs projected into the unfolding blackness of an abandoned subway tunnel, and hand-knitted cozies blanketing a turnstile.

The upcoming incarnation, slated for June 22, includes 9 programs spanning short plays, dance performances, and static art exhibits. The performances weave in and out of the museum’s fleet of historic train cars and buses, conjuring a platform even louder and more frenetic than usual.