Press Release, September 2012 Doug Aitken ALTERED EARTH 20th October – 20th November, 2012 Parc des Ateliers Grande Halle 33 avenue Victor Hugo – 13200 Arles, France. Contacts Presse [email protected] © Doug Aitken Workshop and LUMA Foundation « The Camargue is a mysterious, naturally sculpted land emitting a rough beauty and individuality. This is a setting where German bunkers are being reclaimed by migratory birds, and where the river Rhône spreads out to the Mediterranean Sea over shallow lagoons, revealing vast salt mines. ALTERED EARTH is not a documentary: it is a project which explores a kaleidoscopic interpretation of the modern landscape […] » Doug Aitken. As part of the 2012 program, the LUMA Foundation is pleased to announce a new exhibition by American artist, Doug Aitken: ALTERED EARTH. The exhibition will take place from 20th October- 20th November 2012, in the Grande Halle of the Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France. ALTERED EARTH – is a 21st century Earthwork. This multimedia work is described by Doug Aitken as “a series of moments and fragments of time focussing on the geography of the Camargue”, which provides “an almost holographic view of the physical landscape.” The work exists through moving images, sound and architecture, exploring the ever-changing landscape. It is a work of Land art for the electronic era. The installation of ALTERED EARTH creates a form of liquid architecture out of large scale moving images where the viewer explores a labyrinth of synchronized moving images, which explore new definitions of time and place. The artwork is conceived as a truly connected multimedia experience. As the work produces its own architecture, and, by extension, its own landscape, Doug Aitken has also developed a form for ALTERED EARTH, through which the work might “reconfigure itself architecturally and its content can continuously shift.” It was this thinking that led to the conception of the digital application ALTERED EARTH, as a means by which the spectator can interact with this landscape and “have a new dialogue with it, each time they encounter it “. The application is free and can be downloaded at www.doug-aitken-arles.com. A new, updated version of the app will be available during the exhibition and visitors are invited to experiment with it. ALTERED EARTH will be projected as a freestanding installation in the Grande Halle of the Parc des Ateliers in Arles, France. The installation will consist of 12 screens measuring 8.5m by 4.78m, suspended 60cm from the ground. Through this medium of multi-screen video, ALTERED EARTH immerses the visitor in a world of moving images, offering a unique experience of strolling through a new form of landscape. Doug Aitken’s work, commissioned and produced by the LUMA Foundation as the foundation started to think of the development of the Parc des Ateliers in Arles- the capital city of the Camargue- is unique and is intrinsically linked to the region. The artist wanted the work to remain anchored in its original surroundings and be site-specific. For this reason, the work will not be re- edited and the exhibition “will not travel outside the landscape in which it was born. The work is conceived from the DNA of the Camargue landscape and will only ever physically exist there.” ALTERED EARTH- Arles, a city of moving images was first projected onto a purpose-built transparent screen placed on Place de la République in Arles in July 2011 during the opening of the Rencontres internationales de la Photographie. A second station of this piece took place in London at the Serpentine Gallery in October 2011, where the ALTERED EARTH App was launched. For its third manifestation, the exhibition is housed in the Grande Halle which is one of the existing buildings in the Parc des Ateliers where the LUMA Foundation is planning a new center for production of ideas, art and exhibitions. Performance The exhibition ALTERED EARTH will open with a performance by Californian composer Terry Riley and special guest, combining music and contemporary art. The opening of ALTERED EARTH will become a night of sound and vision. A live, one-hour, performance will merge experimental music and contemporary art, creating a unique experience. The idea is to break down the stage and the barriers that separate music and image. The installation will become a seamless experience that empowers the viewer to embrace the essence of the creative moment. Concurrent with the ALTERED EARTH performance, the viewer can move through different configurations of the installation. Each viewer will be individually and uniquely constructing narratives from what surrounds them. The performance will be recorded to become the original score for the piece and the apps. Biographies Doug Aitken Doug Aitken was born in California in 1968. He lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. Widely known for his innovative fine art installations, Doug Aitken is at the forefront of 21st century communication. Utilizing a wide array of media and artistic approaches, his eye leads us into a world where time, space, and memory are fluid concepts. Aitken’s body of work ranges from photography, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, and installations. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, in such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Vienna Secession, the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. He participated in the Whitney Biennial 1997 and 2000 and earned the International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999 for the installation Electric earth. Aitken’s Sleepwalkers exhibition at MoMA in 2007 transformed an entire block of Manhattan into an expansive cinematic experience as he covered the museum’s exteriors walls with projections. In 2009, his Sonic Pavilion opened to the public in the forested hills of Brazil at the new cultural foundation INHOTIM. Aitken’s multiform artwork Black Mirror engaged a site- specific multi-channel video installation and a live theatre performance on a uniquely designed barge floating off Athens and Hydra Island, Greece. In 2012, with the presentation of his video work Song1 on the circular façade of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., spring 2012, Aitken proved once more his ability to identify and explore the possibilities for using almost anything as a projection surface. The video installation, visible and above all audible from afar, used the museum’s special architecture to suggest a unique, timeless loop of partly fragmented, partly overlapping moving images. This work is currently showcased at the gallery Eva Presenhuber in Zurich, Switzerland (from September 1 to October 20, 2012). Also in autumn 2012, Aitken’s first public realm installation entitled The Source is to be launched in the UK at Tate Liverpool, as part of the Liverpool Biennale 2012. From 15 September 2012 – 13 January 2013, The Source will showcase the artist’s pioneering approach to public art. Terry Riley Terry Riley, born on 24th June 1935 in California, is a contemporary American composer. Terry Riley launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic IN C in 1964. This seminal work provided a new concept in musical form based on interlocking repetitive patterns. Its impact was to change the course of 20th Century music and its influence has been heard in the works of prominent composers such as Steve Reich, Philip Glass and in the music of Rock Groups such as The Who, Radiohead, Brian Eno, and David Bowie and many others. Terry Riley's hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated eastern flavoured improvisations and compositions set the stage for the prevailing interest in a new tonality. Riley has been cited as being one of the most important composers of the second half of the 20th century. Doug Aitken ALTERED EARTH - Arles, city of moving images Parc des Ateliers Grande Halle 33 avenue Victor Hugo 13200 Arles, France. 20 October – 20 November, 2012 Mon - Fri 13-18.30h Sat & Sun 11-18.30h Entry 5 Euros Entry is free to the inhabitants of Arles at all times. Contacts Brunswick Arts: Leslie Compan 06 29 18 48 12 [email protected] [email protected] Mustapha Bouhayati 06 10 57 38 99 [email protected] NOTES TO THE EDITORS Abstract from a conversation between Doug Aitken & Hans Ulrich Obrist, March 2011 […] “Altered Earth is a site-specific work, a series of moments and fragments of time focusing on the geography of the Camargue, an almost holographic view of the physical landscape. The work is unique to the landscape it was created in. It is conceived from the DNA of the Camargue landscape and will only ever physically exist there. […] […] Change is at the core of this work, the idea that the installation can reconfigure itself architecturally and its content can continuously shift so viewers can have a new dialogue with it each time they encounter it. […][…] The work is its own image architecture, its own psychological landscape. I was very interested in the idea of producing ‘image architecture’ in which images and sounds – through editing and synchronicity – create the sense of architectural form. […] […]With this project I’m interested in creating a more abstract space, less anchored or defined, in which viewers can be drawn into the landscape the work creates and generate their own narrative. […] […]So much Earth Art was created by reforming and reshaping the earth, aggressively bulldozing the landscape; whereas I was interested in a different approach in which the moving image and sound have no impact at all on the land, but instil the work with a strange and elusive energy.” […] Doug Aitken The LUMA Foundation and the Parc des Ateliers This exhibition follows suit in a series of exhibitions and conferences organised by the LUMA Foundation in Arles and is leading up to the build of a new centre, the Parc des Ateliers, committed to the production of art, exhibitions and ideas.