Narrative remixed

DOUG AITKEN: INTERIORS

HENRY GALLERY

SEATTLE, WA

MARCH 26-JULY 10, 2005

Doug Aitken, one of today's most well-known innovators in the arena of sound and video art, emerged on the scene in 1993 with a solo exhibition at the AC Project Room in New York City. In 1999 he received a Golden Lion International Prize at the Venice Biennale for Electric Earth, created in the same year. In 2000, Aitken won a Larry Aldrich Foundation Award and gained further attention from the Whitney Biennial and the Biennale of Sydney. In 2002, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia commissioned Aitken to create the installation "interiors." Since then, the piece has exhibited both nationally and internationally including a recent showing, "Doug Aitken: interiors," at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, WA. In this work, Aitken goes beyond proficiently melding sound with video and manipulates the dramatic timing inherent in the media to highlight the passage of time. In addition, Aitken's captivating images and noises from everyday life are surreal, providing a mesmerizing experience.

"Interiors" is a three-channel video installation. A cacophony of sounds and flurry of images create a visual and auditory whirlpool for the senses. Upon entering the darkened gallery, translucent scrims create vaporous walls, delineating a ghostly construction in a cross-shaped arrangement. From the short passageway, the video appears only as a vortex of sounds and images--a bustle of distant abstracted information. The projections are in a half-moon triptych arrangement, where viewers are encouraged to sit on a round puffy seat at the center to experience each video separately.

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"Interiors" is comprised of four seven-minute segments, each following one of four characters in preparation for an activity: a woman dresses in a locker room before a match of handball, a Japanese auctioneer practices phrases for his work, a helicopter factory employee readies himself and a rap musician awaits his cue. Exterior landscape and architecture liquidly transition into shots of the actors. Each video plays simultaneously and harmonizes during specific instances. The cycle is comparable to the sound and motion of a breaking wave. The audio begins softly and the images are sparse, developing into an overlapping crescendo with increased speed. A blank screen and silence accents the finale.

Throughout "interiors," surreal moments and noises are subtle yet add to the dreamlike feel of the installation. During one section, Andre Benjamin, from the group Outkast, performs a rap, which at times, sounds like a chant of non-verbal passages. Benjamin's body moves in a seductive glide along a softly glowing surface in an unrecognizable location. Suddenly he moves along the ceiling, strangely defying gravity. A separate projection depicts a Japanese man and a woman standing by a heap of detritus in an urban landscape. The man whispers incoherent words to a motionless and silent baby strapped to the woman's front. A purplish gray background and urban decay creates an eerie otherworldly surrounding. Amidst barren backgrounds, unusual moments materialize from the most ordinary events. These surrealistic qualities grab and hold the viewer's attention, generating a hypnotic experience.

Aitken culled together elements from everyday life--the echoing sound of a ball hitting the walls of an indoor court and the steady strike of an auctioneer's finger. The tempo of a tap dancer's performance and Benjamin's rap beats are unsynchronized in their original context, yet Aitken manipulates and edits these sounds so that they fall into rhythm during specific moments. The spectator experiences a similar but not exact viewing of each cycle due to slight variations, conveying the concept that one narrative does not exist nor is cherished.

In an interview with Russell Ferguson in the 2003 book Doug Aitken A-Z Book (Fractals) the artist reveals, "I've always seen films as being something that is very liquid, which is intangible. In a lot of ways it seems non-precious, almost disposable. It's a flickering image which you can reach for but not hold onto." (1) Equally central to Aitken's "interiors" is the cyclical experience of time and narrative. The main characters--Benjamin, the auctioneer, a Japanese couple, a factory worker, and the handball player--each have an isolated story presented on separate screens. However, sounds and images unify at various points via Aitken's editing and manipulation. Each of the four video segments includes aspects of the other chain of events, creating a non-linear storyline. Numerous versions of the tale are created and in essence, a cyclical and endless story.

Aitken's "interiors" is a contemporary meditation on the passage of time and narrative. Surrealistic images provide hauntingly beautiful scenarios, which converge suddenly and then disappear. The artist comments on "interiors" in the Henry Art Gallery press materials by saying, "it is about the idea of chaos and order, harmony and disharmony. It looks at how moments in time come together and then separate. It is a composition in the musical sense, like a piece of cacophonic music in which rare moments collide to create larger meanings. It is a piece about time." (2)