9 Return to the Real—at Lunch on June 8, 2023 in Zurich Barbara Bergmann (BB): When we saw your show in Frankfurt am Main in 2015, we were so impressed. It’s very rare to see a moving image installation in which you are so immersed. Often, you enter a video room and leave after a few minutes, but when we saw SONG1 and migration (empire), for example, we stayed and were engaged from beginning to end. How do you approach making your works, and how do you consider the viewer when you are creating? Doug Aitken (DA): Art can be many things, and it can explore many concepts and diverse mediums. Within my practice, some of the works I make use moving images. When I approach filmic works, I’m always interested in the idea of breaking the screen and creating a situation where the viewer is really in the world of the work and really moving with it, dancing with it, merging with it, and being challenged by it. The history of narrative is the history of storytelling, from the campfire conversation to theater, books, and opera—or to the creation of film. In all these situations, the viewer is always passive, a voyeur or an observer. I became very interested in finding a way to go into and beyond the screen. Initially, in the 1990s, I was experimenting in a literal way with multi-screen works, and I became more and more interested in not only creating environments for the works to exist but also in new forms of storytelling and narrative structures. It’s a fascinating subject because it reflects on how we see life and explore the way our world is changing. The landscape around us is constantly evolving and, perceptually, we’re outgrowing some of the old modes and evolving into new frequencies of perception. We live in a much more non-linear world now, a world that consists of fragments, pieces of information, pulses of words and language; it’s accelerating more rapidly. I think my work grows out of this condition and emerges out of this constantly changing landscape. BB: You often combine architecture, music, and film. How do you integrate different media? Do you have an idea at the beginning when you start the work, or do these elements present themselves discretely and later merge into something visual? DA: Making art is a living act. It’s as simple as the act of living. You’re continuously moving, you’re experiencing and sensing, and because these experiences are processed, they can become the DNA for a work of art, the ingredients for creativity that builds over time. The creative process for me is very kaleidoscopic. It’s open and fragmented, and I’m very interested in welding together disparate ideas—fusing things that at times seem like they are non-sequitur, and maybe don’t make sense or are seemingly awkward—and creating new structures with them. There are different ways to create. Some projects are very singular and happen quickly. The idea is conceived, then I build off that and make the work. But other projects are a series of words or images that I find myself collaging together. And that can be strange and foreign. It can be a struggle, while at other times that sequencing can seamlessly start to build itself and create form and structure. I work in a very polyphonic way where I have different ideas happening simultaneously, and that often evolves into works that might be in different media. It might be that one concept crystalizes into a live performance, or something else is an earthwork in the landscape, and another may be a moving image or architectural. I have never really been interested in restricting that or defining myself by a medium, because I feel like making art is more of an outward thrust. I’m creating a tapestry of ideas woven together, and I try to use the most precise, eloquent, or strongest system at that moment to express it. I think making art can work in very flexible way that can lead you into new and unexpected directions.
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