Multimedia artist Aitken is extremely busy. A survey of his work opens at Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt on July 9. “Station to Station,” the art project that traveled 4,000 miles by train across the United States in September 2013, has now been condensed into a feature film — a mirage of 61 one-minute portraits — which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The film will open theatrically
in London this month to coincide with the first international stop of “Station to Station,” which settles in for a month at
the Barbican from June 27 and will feature, among other things, Ed Ruscha cooking his special cactus omelet and a yurt installation by Kenneth Anger. At the same time, Aitken has a solo show opening June 12 at Victoria Miro, also in London, the centerpiece of which is “Eyes closed, wide awake (sonic fountain II),” 2014, an audio sculpture that uses dripping water to create an immersive soundscape. ARTINFO’s Craig Hubert spoke with Aitken about working in diametric extremes.Let’s begin with “Station to Station.” Why did you want to make a film out of the original project? I had never had designs to make a long-form film out of the project, but as it accelerated and the amount of collaboration and artworks grew and grew, we found ourselves filming the whole time. We were initially looking at making these short films of different artists, or different performances, or different moments in time, to kind of democratize the project, to give away ideas. Whether it’s Lawrence Weiner in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere or Liz Glynn in a nomadic sculpture performing across the country, we wanted to find a way to take the conceptual aspect of the project and liberate it and share it through moving images. By the time the project was completed, we found ourselves back at the studio with this amazing footage that was very fragmented and captured
what was essentially an exquisite corpse that went for 4,000 miles. Every stop was different artists or performers that continuously changed. When I sat down and started looking at this, I thought it would be very interesting to create a narrative out of it and let that be an expression of the project, to communicate the questions and experience of what had happened. But after a couple of months, I realized there was no way this would work as a traditional film, like a documentary. This wasn’t the kind of project or ideology where you would have a voiceover or narrator. So we started editing, and it was like the film took over. Every 60 seconds is a completely separate film. Every story started to create its own structure, and all those pieces were more able to express a concept of the project and everything that happened in it then if it was a straight story. It was interesting in a situation like this, seeing the project start to take over and say, “I don’t want to be in one of those formal roles — I want to be in a particle accelerator of one-minute films.”The actual “Station to Station” train journey and the resulting film are both engaged with time, but in completely different ways — one is 4,000 miles long, time stretched out, while the film is condensed into 61 minutes, these short bursts of time. Very much so. You know, creating a structure like we did for the film, you’re able to bring different stories than you might normally. What I mean by that is, you might find a hitchhiker somewhere on the project, in the middle of the Mojave Desert, who
has some kind of really unique perspective on things, and you film it. Suddenly, he’s next to an artist or musician you’ve been following for years. That kind of tension breaks down a hierarchy of the structure.You’re bringing the “Station to
Station” project to London. Why make the jump overseas?With “Station to Station,” I felt a necessity to create a platform where there could be
all these different forms of culture occupying one space, where they could merge or rub
up against one another. I think, in a lot of ways, the cultural condition we’re living in right now is segregated. That segregation is mostly because of capitalism, the markets surrounding these different things — music
or art or whatnot. Things become frozen in the marketplace. I wanted to create a space where something could happen outside of that, something that was restless, with artworks that were more living and time-based. So the situation in London is very interesting. I see it as the diametric opposite of the train journey, where you’re going from place to place to place. With the London “Station to Station,” I wondered, could we create a living exhibition or a happening that would change constantly? Every day, every hour, it’s different. You’re never seeing the same show, ever, because it’s constructed out of living artworks and living encounters. I like the idea that we’re not making a project so somebody can ship their sculpture from the studio and then install it.You mentioned diametric opposites, so maybe this is a good time to discuss the show at Victoria Miro. Does working on projects that are constructed out of living artworks and encounters make it difficult to return to the traditional white cube?Everyone has their own way of making what they make, I guess, but I’ve always been attracted to simultaneity, working on multiple projects and concepts at the same time. In doing that, it allows you to move wider and to experiment more. When I’m engaged in projects like “Station to Station” that are dealing with a lot of moving parts, I find for myself, for my artmaking, that I like to have the opposite extreme. So an exhibition like the one at Victoria Miro is almost like a still life. One of the primary pieces is the sonic fountain, where the water that drips out of it creates this minimal soundscape where you lose track of time entirely and are in this “present.” I was interested in this approach, and in it you just make work the way you live your life, and live your work. That’s not really a direct answer, but I
guess it all just balances itself out.
How does your interest in sound relate to your more visual work?For me, all mediums have always been equal in terms of what I make. You find yourself creating art of ideas, or a curiosity, or an impetus, or a necessity at times. But I’ve never really put the medium before the idea. I think, as a result, I’ve never felt the need to define myself by making moving-image work, or making sculptures. Sound has always been important to me, and something that is immaterial is so fascinating. It’s in the air for a brief time. To use that as a vehicle for ideas or concepts — there’s such an open landscape there. Even the earlier pieces I did, something like “Eraser” (1999), you see the film, which is shot on an island that has been evacuated due to a volcanic eruption, and the sound you hear was recorded entirely on that island and then is composed into a score for the moving images. So I’ve always tried to find a way to bring back the meaning to things, so things don’t simply exist on an aesthetic level.Speaking of moving to extremes, are you eager to jump into another large-scale “moving project” after these still-life exhibitions?I don’t know — I’m just trying to survive this coming summer. The one thing that is larger than both of these things is the survey show at the Schirn Kunsthalle. It’s been really interesting spending this last year or so developing all these projects at once. The project is existing works going back 15 years or something, then you have “Station to Station,” which is this living thing, and then a show like that at Victoria Miro, which is work I’m making right now. I’m really stimulated, seeing all these systems happening at once. It’s interesting seeing them feed off each other.A version of this article appears in the June 2015 issue of Modern Painters magazine.
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