Doug Aitken: exhibition at the Schirn in Frankfurt – SPIEGEL ONLINE

A woman with no history. She sits in front of the laptop in a cheap motel room, she stands on a secluded airport, gathering over the rust yellow clouds of dust as an apocalyptic disaster. The lack of history in Doug Aitken’s installation “Black Mirror” is comprehensive: on three screens, the actress and indie icon Chloë Sevigny is a digital Drifterin, on the mirrored walls in the windowless room are the same old scenes of Entzwurzelung and isolation to see.

“Never stagnate, never stop,” says Sevigny, her look in vagueness, between need and cold. “Exchange, connect and move on.” The rhythmic clatter the keychain in your hand are only formally before an order. Because in Aitken’s scenes of nested restlessness is lengthens nothing left, that would be to arrange yet because reigns as lifestyle of permanent transit. In the US, Doug Aitken is a star of the art scene, working alongside Sevigny about already with Björk, Beck and Tilda Swinton together, presented at the MoMa from. Now the 47-year-old Californian is to be known also in Germany: 1400 square meters, the total exhibition area has, the Schirn cleared the multimedia artist in Frankfurt, who moves freely in all kinds of disciplines, with sculpture works the way with photography, installations composed of film and light boxes, organized the performances.

A theme but one all his work: the fascination restless. In the best moments, the works function as a somber commentary on a society that is itself has been lost by an acceleration of all areas of life itself.

In the Schirn Aitken shows in addition to the Sevigny episodes about “Song 1″: Scenes on uprooted urbanites who exchange a glance hardly one another, are united only on the soundtrack by a common song. They are projected onto a cylindrical canvas that surrounds the viewer almost completely. So this gets after a few minutes the eerie feeling to get out of a linear narrative time.

“I want to create moments that are completely detached it, at what point in history we actually find ourselves,” said Aitken. For a 47-year-old man who is only interested in the now, he looks like an amazing amount of history from attractive crumpled in blue shirt and sneakers, a bit like a mix of a pop musician who is getting on in years, and a Kennedy SON.

“The absolute present is what I enjoy the most.” Even this morning, his exhibition in Frankfurt is accessible for the first time, he buries himself still with the laptop between green foam triangles in the children’s area of ​​the Schirn. Perhaps out of nervousness, perhaps from restless desire to work, we would not put it past him.

“I’m thinking about the next project,” he says, politely, still feel it is not going after that with him the conversation disturbs because it forces him to pause. Yes, the show was a big challenge, because he had to look into the past. “I have but accustomed, because I understood my work as notes from which a new composition is created.”

Doug Aitken’s work at a Glance

And the somber undertones, the loneliness, the critique of civilization? What makes him most afraid of when he looks at the US company? The question is too far, he says. “I’m interested in how things evolve.”

Aitken remains in the fascination of the moment. He sometimes sounding like the voice-over-voice of a particularly menschelnden iPhone commercial. “We live in a society that is so tied to the past and always considered what might happen in the future. The sheer presence has become rare.”

Also in his work, there are sometimes objects where this presence mantra so dominated that the aesthetic enjoyment off each critical pause. Then you will be unsure as viewers because slightly blurred at Aitken. Here works its way from one? Or is he himself only symptom of an attitude-free acceleration?

For his first video installation “Diamond Sea” about who was honored at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and will also be shown in the current exhibition of the Schirn, traveled Aitken an orphaned desert area in Namibia. Once here met German colonizers on diamonds early 20th century, the area was systematically exploited, then declared a prohibited area.

Aitken filmed ghost towns, where the sand is running through the roofs and weather rusty bed frames, with a volatile, unpolished roughness. He relieved the former diamond mines through this aestheticism but also the location and history. It gives the impression of a no man’s land that could be anywhere.

Doug Aitken’s work has been exhibited in the Frankfurt Schirn Kunsthalle From 9 July to September 27th.