Words matter. These are the best Doug Aitken Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I always thought about ‘Station to Station’ as an approach. It was about creating an alternative platform for culture where different mediums could co-exist.
I have a weak spot for late ’60s-early ’70s yippie paperbacks and protest manifestos. I find them at flea markets or online. One of my favorites is ‘Right On,’ a compendium of student protests made into this 95-cent paperback with the most amazing graphics.
There’s really no differentiation between the work I make and the world I live in.
In our daily lives, we see ourselves often in very reductive ways. I want to explore motion, change and flux, whether we are looking in the mirror or seeing ourselves in our surroundings. The singular view of self contradicts the act of living.
One of the core reasons for creating ‘Station to Station’ was to provide a space for exploration and cultural friction between different mediums. It should be natural for mediums like music, film and art to cross over, and we wanted to empower that process.
I see life as a burning meteorite that you can climb all over, and feed off, as it is falling to earth.
The idea of a ‘happening’ is that there is little distance between the viewer and it, whatever ‘it’ is. It’s an experience that’s on-going and evolving.
We live in a world where art exists in galleries and museums, and musicians have to play the same venues over and over.
We are all affected by the time we are born into, and of course that feeds into your work. Society is based on storytelling – religious myths, opera, film – and 1968 was always seen as a time of rupture and fragmentation. I have always been interested in those words.
I think that ‘Station to Station’ is a nomadic project not only in a literal sense, as it’s traveling by train from place to place. Some of these places are New York City or Los Angeles, but some of these places are rather off-the-grid places.
Art is always a search for understanding, and the different levels and frequencies of that search feel completely comfortable and natural to me.
It’s very easy to lose track of the environment around you, to lose touch with the present.
We are engaging with so many art forms at once in the 21st century, but we’re presented with them in a way that is so isolated.
We’re moving into an era when things are dematerialised and much more holographic. Floating above the physical world and the geographic map, there’s another landscape that’s constantly changing – something like a cloud – of communication, information, exchange and commerce.
The ‘Station to Station’ film is a fast-moving journey through the modern creative landscape. It’s a kaleidoscope of voices and impressions rather than a standard linear film.
I love art that haunts me, that stays with me, that is left embedded in my mind. I don’t really think there is any use for owning or collecting art; it is more about remembering and preserving it in the minds eye and allowing it into your cultural DNA.
The 20th century is a period defined by cultural and artistic movements. However, the 21st century creative-scape that we occupy now doesn’t really have movements in the same way. Instead it’s made up of diverse individuals working across various platforms simultaneously; art, architecture, film, music and literature.
I’m not a journalist; I’m probably a horrible interviewer. The one small thing I have is I’m curious, and I’m interested in who I’m with.
The ‘Station to Station’ film is made entirely out of one-minute films, and each of the 62 minutes is a completely different person, place or encounter.
The ‘Station to Station’ film has been fascinating to create. It feels as though it made itself in a way, and after awhile, the film told us what it needed and began to sculpt itself.
I think there is a hunger for things that wake you up, something that makes you peel back your eyes, that reminds you that you are alive. Art is at its best when it is in the ‘now.’
I’m really a believer in being in situations that feel new and awkward and different. And I love that feeling of being in motion – that sense you find when you’re traveling.
‘Planet Caravan’ by Black Sabbath is such a delicate song from such a surprising place.
I don’t really care about interruptions. I accept technology, and I don’t turn things off. I’ve found a peace with fragmentation and a harmony with switching gears quickly to other things.
The perfect pop song is a 20th-century creation; it’s not a sonnet, it’s not an opera, it’s something short – three and a half minutes by nature – and has this ability to travel and to defy class and economic structures.
