Exhibit hopes to deter subway surfers with footage shot by teen who died riding 7 train

The video opens with a subway train racing through a tunnel, shot from the top of a car. There’s a photo of a young man lying down below the subway tracks as a train passes over him. Then a shot appears of a lone figure sitting on train tracks in an empty tunnel.

These are some of the images in an unsettling video using photographs and footage captured by Kosse Laureano, 17, who died last year subway surfing on a 7 train.

SAFESPACE: A project by Alexander Antelman from Maria Antelman on Vimeo.

“He didn't really process it as being something dangerous,” said Laureano’s classmate and friend, Alexander Antelman, 16, who created the video montage. “It was more just him urban exploring and having fun. And I think that at some point after you do stuff like this, a lot of times you feel invincible, like nothing's going to happen to you.”

The video is part of an art exhibition produced by NYC Culture Club on display at the Oculus Transit Center in Lower Manhattan.

Antelman’s “Underworld: A Memorial to Kosse Laureano (2004-2022)” project is a marked contrast with calls from Mayor Eric Adams, who has repeatedly urged social media companies to be more aggressive removing subway surfing videos.

Antelman is taking more of a scared straight approach.

“I wanted to do something for him, I didn't want him to be left totally in vain,” Antelman said.

Text messages appear throughout the montage of Laureano’s subway surfing footage and daredevil urban exploring photos from the top of bridges and skyscrapers.

“Yo k bro lmk if ur good” reads the last message Antelman sent Laureano.

“Hey do you know where Kosse is? He didn’t come home last night,” reads another from Laureano’s mother.

Antelman said he hoped the footage would deter people from subway surfing.

“Give people a perspective that, hey, maybe if I die, that's going to happen with me,” Antelman said. “Think about what your mom's going to feel like.”

There have been four people killed subway surfing or riding on top of moving trains this year, a number that’s on track to surpass the past four years of subway surfing deaths combined, which amounted to five deaths in total.

Police and paramedics found Laureano unconscious on the tracks near the 34th Street-Hudson Yards station on Aug. 9, 2022 at 4:30 a.m.

Laureano attended Millennium High School, loved skateboarding and photography, and had a “dry sense of humor that would keep you laughing for days,” according to an online obituary.

“Kosse said that in the tunnels one doesn’t have to listen to anybody, one can do whatever he wants. That feeling of freedom becomes addicting. The tunnels are like an empty version of the streets above. They are so large and chaotic, and they all intertwine. It’s like navigating a new city under the city you already know so well, with constant adrenaline pumping through you,” Antelman wrote in an artist’s statement.

The MTA is still trying to block subway surfing content before it spreads.

“We continue to work with all relevant platforms to establish or improve algorithmic monitoring and ensure their sustained vigilance,” MTA Chief Safety and Security Officer Patrick Warren wrote in a statement, adding that social media companies have been “generally responsive” to requests from the MTA about subway surfing footage.

Emails to Snapchat, Facebook and TikTok about their subway surfing policies were not returned.

Still, the number of subway surfing incidents and deaths keeps ticking up.

In 2022, The MTA recorded 928 instances of people riding outside of subway trains, a number that includes subway surfing, along with people riding on the back or on other parts of the train. That’s a significant jump from the previous year, when the MTA only noted 206 such instances.

The MTA recorded 455 instances of people riding outside of train cars between January and June this year.

The NYPD, which just started tracking the data this year, reports 80 incidents of subway surfing in 2023.

Antelman acknowledged his video exhibit, which is on display until Aug. 5, won’t change everyone’s mind.

“I mean, this stuff has been happening … since the trains were first in New York,” he said. “So I guess it's more widespread now, but it's always existed and I don't think that they could really stop it, to be honest.”

But Antelman admitted that after Laureano died, his group of friends stopped subway surfing.