Making the Video

Doug Aitken raises video installation to a new, mature level. It has always seemed that film, video and techno-installation art could offer more: something integral, undivided, rigorous, powerful-- possibly something as interesting as an advertisement on television or a music video. We have watched and waited in vain, standing on one bored foot and then the other, while video “art,” supposedly rendered profound by its bad technology, glacial motion and/or a glut of language, spooled endlessly through machines. Aitken, whose installation Interiors at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, has generated great word-of-mouth among art students in the area, proffers beauty with a mesmerizing, restless, layered complexity.

The composer Richard Wagner coined the unlovely term Gesamtkunstwerk to describe his conception of opera as the combined music drama. The concept of orchestrating diverse sensory information in an intense meaningful work of art can be appropriately applied to Aitken’s video installations. Like Wagner’s operas, Aitken’s work is cyclic, incorporating many repeated motifs (perhaps leitmotifs?). It builds to similar climactic moments.

On the other hand, even aside from differences of medium, Aitken’s Interiors diverges wildly from Wagner’s ponderous operas in a couple of respects. Interiors breaks into fast-paced seven-minute segments that are complete in themselves and, while Wagner relied on legend and mythology for his structure, Aitken’s work is intentionally non-linear, non-narrative and, specifically, anti-mythological. In a talk he gave at the FWM a few weeks ago, he spoke of using the “edit points” of film to create an “architecture.”

Nevertheless, this “architecture” has a straightforward structure with regard to the four brief film sequences that make up Interiors. Taken singly or together they build from quietude to intensity that briefly passes beyond clear visual or auditory perception and is followed by a short, serene interlude. Does it sound like sex? The metaphor is inescapable. But the images are not erotic.

The videos (only three are viewable in any cycle) are precisely edited, juxtaposing internal actions and specific images and occasionally manipulated ambient sound. A tranquil, sinuous pace is established at the beginning through the jewel-like flow of traffic in the anonymous urban night. The pace accelerates hypnotically, engaging us in different architectural settings (exteriors, then interiors) and isolated human activities. Almost imperceptibly, the action races irresistibly to a blurred climax of intercut images and reverberating frenetic pulses actually felt in the bodies of those seated at the center of the projections. Then, for a few seconds, breathless silence reigns over facial close-ups smacked down one upon the other like playing cards. A black screen introduces lyrical dawn panoramas concluding in a gentle flow of water and air.

The FWM’s fabric contribution is a physical architecture of silkscreen panels onto which the videos are projected. One enters a short open “nave” of a cross-shaped structure. At the crossing, seating on a doughnut-shaped pouf forces the visitor to choose a specific viewing direction. Short videos are projected simultaneously at the ends of three arms of the cross. Though it appears that they “travel” from one screen to another when the cycle begins anew, in fact, each video exists in three versions with small variations.

It’s tempting to call the videos “stories.” One shot in Tokyo includes an empty auction room at night with curved rows of seating and strips of neon. The auctioneer, costumed in a suit for the video, sits in a penthouse tapping his fingers and barking incomprehensible auctionese. The sequence ends with a Japanese couple and their spookily placid baby viewing a large pile of scrap metal at dawn.

The protagonist of a helicopter plant video wears a Gumby-like nylon coverall and blue rubber gloves. As the auctioneer sweats and calls, this man tap dances in his private nighttime space. The overwhelming sound blends with the words of rapper Andre Benjamin from OutKast, filmed in Los Angeles. Benjamin’s sequence, which contains several surreal elements and a final shot of petals or leaves blowing as he walks past a wall, is the most poetic.

A handball sequence, in contrast, works best as a foil for the others. Skyscraper grids, a white wall that just fits inside the white screen and a shot of a helicopter that complements the neighboring video are all effective. Throughout the four thematic pieces, Aitken simultaneously emphasizes momentarily related images, like close-ups of hands.

His work suggests sources from Fellini to MTV, and, indeed, he did make music videos for a while. Though it does not tell stories, Interiors is full of content. One could find social commentary: thoughts relating to urban human interaction, isolation and families. The treatment of concrete wastelands or dumps as objects of beauty is provocative. Interiority is explored in many ways through this work. As its physical architecture allows us to view the videos seated within the structure of screens, or standing outside where we can see everything simultaneously, Interiors reminds us that perception is rich, but it does not dictate how we should evaluate it.

Browse The
November 7, 2002
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