LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

Landscapes and Change

Michael Kurcfeld checks in with multidisciplinary artist Doug Aitken about two recent projects.

By Michael Kurcfeld, Eli Diner

March 21, 2025

ARTIST DOUG AITKEN came to international prominence with Electric Earth in 1999. A mesmerizing multiscreen video installation, the work won the International Prize at the Venice Biennale and was a sensation at the Whitney Biennial the following year. The viewer is surrounded by screens, across which play out rhythmic and fractured scenes of a young man moving through a nocturnal Los Angeles. “A lot of times I dance so fast that I become what’s around me,” the protagonist says.

Across a great variety of media and genres—in addition to film and video installation, he works in sculpture, photography, and site-specific and architectural interventions of various kinds—an interest in movement and place, so pronounced in Electric Earth, has been a hallmark of Aiken’s work throughout his career. His Station to Station project (2013) saw Aitken transform a train into a nomadic performance platform and kinetic light sculpture, as it made its way from New York to San Francisco, making stops at key points along the way. For New Horizon (2019), he created a reflective hot-air balloon that traveled across Massachusetts, creating site-specific happenings at each landing. His video installations survey the landscapes and crumbling built environment of the American West (HOWL, 2023), the frenetic energy of Bollywood studios (Into the Sun, 1999), and Arctic vistas and melting glaciers (New Ocean, 2001), drawing on aspects of the music video format and Hollywood films to create moody and immersive experiences.