Sleepwalkers

Children of long distance lorry drivers, travelling with their fathers, become involved in attempted hijacking.

Blow Debris similarly suggests narrative but prefers to offer it in the form of a drifting, almost aimless experience; the piece enacts a passage or journey as we follow a group of nude wanderers in a desert landscape. As with Electric Earth, what could be postmodern anomie becomes celebratory drifting. Aitken spurns a romantic nostalgia for a pristine past and its untrammeled landscapes in favor of the stories suggested by the discarded remnants and detritus that litter the expanse of the Mojave Desert. He also fetishizes the feeling of the desert. Even in the cool, dark space of the gallery rooms housing the huge projections, you sense the lassitude of the characters and time seems to slow down. And then things explode, time reverses, and you are compelled to walk around some more, from dislocation to relocation and back again.

An installation commissioned to be projected on the outer ring of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

An elderly couple gaze into one another's eyes as a house is demolished around them

A nameless drifter navigates a barren landscape punctuated by satellite dishes, radio towers and droning airplanes. Stopping periodically in anonymous hotel rooms, she makes attempts to connect to an unidentified second party.

A cinematic meeting point between nature and technology, Doug Aitken’s unearthly short is enfolded in evocative hymns whose voices are eerily AI-generated. Glimmering phone screens might have replaced the starry Milky Way, yet the famous Venice Beach still hums with the vibrancy of human activities.

In Doug Aitken’s cinemascope-like, walk-in, multi-sectioned, video installation, the public is transported into the atmosphere of an airport by night. A flaming car and an abandoned shopping cart compliment the eerie scenario while, in a parallel world, a noiseless, black rapper sashays through an urban landscape.

1994 Doug Aitken short work

The images in migration (empire) are underscored by the constant sound of running or dripping water. Aitken portrays the wild animals in the sterility of the motel rooms as sublime creatures in a diffuse, bright light. Their fur, feathers or eyes are shown in detailed close-ups. In migration (empire) a dynamic is generated that is at once meditative and powerful – and utterly entrancing. Language(s)

Sending a burning arrow into the stunting effects that the compartmentalization of culture has on how creativity manifests, visual artist Doug Aitken embarked on an experiment exploring a less materialistic and more nomadic direction of art creation, exhibition, and participation. Station to Station involved a train that crossed North America housing a constantly changing creative community including artists, musicians, and curators, who collaborated in the creation of recordings, artworks, films, and 10 unique happenings, across the country.