It was sometime in the early ’80s when my friends and I first heard whispers about hidden signals embedded in traded mixtapes circulating through Copenhagen’s suburban underground. Stories filtered through school hallways and from older siblings who’d come home late with paint-stained hands, telling tales of something strange happening to the trains in the quiet outskirts of the Danish capital. A dog-eared copy of the “Tagphreaks” zine became our bible—a mysterious publication passed hand to hand documenting techniques for “phreaking” urban spaces with spray-paint. With our limited grasp of the English text and diagrams, we pieced together theories until curiosity finally pulled us toward the train yards ourselves. Our first nights by the red DSB train cars yielded nothing but doubt. Armed with a salvaged boombox and spray cans stolen from a neighbor, we snuck into the train yard finding neither the triangular markings with embedded circuitry nor the weird radio signals we had expected. But we kept going back. Then one night, we discovered them—geometric arrows and scattered squares full of glittering circuits adorning the rail cars. The boombox suddenly picked up voices between frequencies as we observed the S-train signals responding to the improvised transmitters we had built from the “Tagpheaks” plans. We cheered as we realized these symbols and circuitry were exactly what we’d been searching for. Before long, we were painting trains, soldering circuits and connecting with other groups of tagphreakers all along our trainline.
DIFFUSED STATES is a part of DATA FLUENCIES: Rivulets April 18 – June 15, 2025 Opening April 18, 6–9pm Fridays, 4pm–9pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 12pm–6pm
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