In the case of Autumn, Aitken wanted to create three music videos, each with their own narrative, to be aired separately at different times as part of his commercial production. The resulting video, shown in galleries, fuses together the three separate narratives in a non-linear fashion. Located on the precipice between the oft-thought mutually exclusive realms of art and entertainment, Autumn stands as an emblematic example of Aitken’s video practice, investigating the cultural numbness generated by the flow of media images.
Doug Aitken "Don't Forget To Breathe" Presented By Regen Projects During Frieze Los Angeles
Los Angeles is a perpetually changing landscape in a state of constant reinvention. Don’t Forget to Breathe, a new installation by Doug Aitken, meditates on the rapidly changing face of technology framed within a relic of our modern past. The atmosphere of the desolate storefront presents a possibility that a chapter of capitalism has completed its life cycle and we are entering the next era where the screen world mirrors the physical one. This new era is increasingly dematerialized, where human connection is evaporating and quickly being replaced by digital life. The open architecture of this empty retail store surrounds the installation of three isolated figures. The absence of commercial logos, goods and consumers renders the store haunting and minimal, a memorial to time past. The building is transformed into an architectural purgatory in sharp contrast to a new era where communication moves at the speed of light and technology’s very presence is dematerialized. Don’t Forget To Breathe will be on view until February 17, 6775 Santa Monica Boulevard
Doug Aitken And Legendary Actor Udo Kier At The Desert X Preview Cocktail Party
photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Highlights From The Preview Of Desert X Biennial In The Coachella Valley Featuring 16 Artists
Desert X is an International contemporary site-specific art exhibition taking place throughout the Coachella Valley, featuring 17 artists, from February 25 to April 30. Highlights include Richard Prince's "Third Place" and Doug Aitken's "Mirage." Click here to learn more about Desert X. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Artists Talk "LA Legends" With Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Moses, and Ed Ruscha @ The Broad Stage In Los Angeles
Presented by The Broad Stage and Sotheby's Institute Of Art, Artist Talk: LA Legends is the first of a series of talks with influential California-based artists, established to explore the living legacy of Los Angeles' arts scene. Art legends and postwar trailblazers set the stage for L.A.'s vibrant contemporary art scene and continue to define L.A.'s cultural landscape today. photography Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Artist Doug Aitken Outside Of His Survey Exhibition "Electric Earth" @ MOCA Los Angeles
photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Doug Aitken Holding A Copy of His Station to Station Book
Doug Aitken at his Station to Station book signing at Cinefile Video in Los Angeles. The Station to Station movie is premiering in Los Angeles and is on view until the end of this week at Nuart Theater. photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Doug Aitken's Station to Station Monograph Tells The Story of a Nomadic Cross-Country Cultural Happening
This illuminating new book tells the story of Doug Aitken's Station to Station project, a nomadic happening that crossed North America by train and continues to explore creativity in the modern landscape. Doug Aitken's Station to Station project is a high speed road trip through modern creativity. Over a 23-day period, the project crossed North America by train presenting a series of cultural interventions and site-specific happenings that took place in ten cities between New York and San Francisco. The train, designed as a moving, kinetic light sculpture, was at the center of it all, housing the constantly changing group of creative individuals and broadcasting experiences to a global audience. Over one hundred unique projects took place during the journey, created by today's leading contributors in contemporary art, music, literature, and culture. This volume presents the ideas that emerged from Station to Station. Stunning full-color illustrations and multiple conversations with Aitken onboard the train document the journey from East to West. Click here to purchase the book.
5 Must See Happenings At Doug Aitken's "Station to Station" Living Exhibition At the Barbican In London
Currently, the Barbican is presenting Doug Aitken’s living exhibition - entitled Station to Station: a 30 Day Happening – with hundreds of free multi arts events taking place over the course of a month with special ticketed events every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening, bringing artists from the worlds of visual art, music, dance and design together. Here are Autre's selects for must see happenings at Station to Station. 1. J. Spaceman from the iconic shoegaze band Spiritualized performs a psychedelic score to William Eggleston’s iconic 1974 film Stranded in Canton, which documents his encounters with the characters of American’s deep south 2. Follow Nick Cave from morning until night, on his 20,000th day on earth and then stay tuned for a talk with the filmmakers 3. Portland-based musician and multimedia artist EMA takes over the Art Gallery with a fully immersive installation experience 4. Manchester's Julie Campbell AKA LoneLady presents an exclusive performance, featuring a new work created during her Barbican residency, combining wrap-around film-footage, brutalism-inspired beats and synth fragments 5. Alan Vega and Martin Rev, aka Suicide, performing classic material, new work, and collaborations with some famous fans
Doug Aitken 100 YRS @ 303 Gallery
Central to Doug Aitken's "100 YRS" exhibition is a new Sonic Fountain, in which water drips from 5 rods suspended from the ceiling, falling into a concrete crater dug out of the gallery floor. The flow of water itself is controlled so as to create specific rhythmic patterns that will morph, collapse and overlap in shifting combinations of speed and volume, lending the physical phenomenon the variable symphonic structure of song. The water itself appears milky white, as if imbued and chemically altered by its aural properties, a basic substance turned supernatural. The amplified sound of droplets conjures the arrhythmia of breathing, and along with the pool's primordial glow, the fountain creates its own sonic system of tracking time. Doug Aitken 100 YRS will be on view until March 23, 2013 at 303 Gallery, 547 W 21st Street, New York, NY.
Doug Aitken's Altered Earth On View This Month in Arles
Incorporating film, literature, data visualizations and sound design, artist Douglas Aitken's Altered Earth invites the user to piece together fragments of the landscape of the region of Camargue France. The site-specific work has been developed into an application for the iPad by Meri Media.The films themselves, of which there are seven, are devoid of narrative or plot, showing Carmague's salt pans, wild horses, and decaying architecture. The LUMA Foundation, which commissioned the work, calls it "a work of land art for the electronic era." Altered Earth will be on view this month projected on the walls of an old train station in Arles, France.
Doug Aitken's Song 1
One of the most important artist's working today is without a doubt Doug Aitken. From photography, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, and installations Aitken's work is a truly unique and distinctive voice of this century. On view now at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., Aitken's multimedia exhibition, entitled Song 1, is a 360 degree projection of films onto the exterior museum set to the soundtrack of the 193os jazz standard reinterpreted by the likes of LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, Beck, Devendra Banhart, No Age and more. Song 1 "will illuminate the entire facade of the Hirshhorn’s iconic building, transforming it into 'liquid architecture' and an urban soundscape. Using eleven high-definition video projectors, Aitken will seamlessly blend imagery to envelop the Museum's exterior, creating a work that redefines cinematic space." Doug Aitken: SONG 1 will be on view until May 13, 2012.