LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

The city is bathed in opaque light, cars move around the square on which the large, monolithic building stands. Apart from the dull whoosh of evening traffic it is quiet. And then: enormous tape spools whirr, and a song begins to play, larger-than-life people sing a love song for the whole city: "Are the stars out tonight? / I don't know if it's cloudy or bright / I only have eyes for you, dear". For his project "SONG 1" Doug Aitken asked actors, musicians and amateur actors to perform the musical song "I Only Have Eyes For You" from the 1930s. "You are here and so am I / maybe millions of people go by / But they all disappear from view / And I only have eyes for you". In the context of Aitken's setting these lines take on a whole new meaning. After all, "SONG 1" was shown 2012 on the facade of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., as a convex 360-degree projection that took in the entire outer wall of the cylindrical museum building, an impressive 220 meter span. As such, the film not only entered into a direct dialog with its urban surroundings with all their streets, lights, buildings, trees and inhabitants, but also with the architecture and material quality of the museum building itself. Sometimes the rough surface of prefabricated concrete is visible, sometimes the film almost envelops the entire building.

Doug Aitken, Sleepwalkers, Installation view, MoMA, New York, 2007, Image via The Expanded Cinema Collective

To date “SONG 1” is the most ambitious version of Doug Aitken’s concept of liquid architecture, which has image and architecture merge into a flowing, dynamic form. For Aitken, who back in the 1990s began experimenting with expanding the medium of film and transferring it into a third dimension the combination of moving image and architecture is only logical. In 2001 for the first time Doug Aitken played an entire museum building. he conceived the work “New Ocean” for the Serpentine Gallery in London: The photos, sound and film extended from the cellar to the ceiling and went beyond the regular exhibition spaces. In New York Aitken went one step further: “Sleepwalkers”, a site-specific work made in 2007 and comprising eight large-scale projections, spread across the glass frontage of the Museum of Modern Art. As the title suggests, the installation was only to be seen at night and told the respective story of eight fictional characters. Curator Klaus Biesenbach calls “Sleepwalkers” a broken narrative, with neither beginning nor end. And indeed the narrations overlap, appear fragmentary. And as so often in Aitken’s outdoor installations the projections can never be viewed simultaneously or in their entirety if only because of the size of the building.

Doug Aitken, Mirror, Installation view, Seattle Art Museum, 2013, Image via Seattle Art Museum

Dense, deep green forests and quiet stretches of water alternate with industrial landscapes and worlds of concrete. A series of LED screens covered the facade of the Seattle Art Museum, narrow strips of light flowed up and down the building. "MIRROR" (2013) was created as a permanent installation, which took up the structures of the museum building, such as the glazed facade, the proportions and cladding and incorporates film images and LED effects to make them more vibrant. In quiet, observing scenes Aitken showed the inhabitants of Seattle the beauty of their city and environs. And he set out to do more than that: "I was interested if the work could move on its own and constantly create its own sequences, patterns and composition. Like a minimalist musical composition," Aitken explained. The colouring, speed and sequence of images alter according to the temperature, brightness or the ambient noise. The film-based installation responds directly to the urban conditions, translates them visually and sets the architecture in motion.

Doug Aitken, The Source, Installation view, Tate Liverpool 2012, Image via Photomonitor

What is the source of creativity, how does an idea come about? And how is it realized? For "THE SOURCE" (2012) Aitken put these questions to Tilda Swinton, Mike Kelley, William Eggleston and others, filmed the interviews and edited them. Aitken himself called the project "a celebration of the power of the individual". And what could be more logical than to build a temple for this creative force? Together with British architect David Adjaye the artist designed a temporary pavilion, a wooden structure, projecting the interviews onto its inner and outer walls. As such, the pavilion, though it was conceived for Tate Liverpool, and was located outside the exhibition space proper, functioned as a walk-in space, a "field of ideas" (Aitken). The architectural structure reflected that of the artistic work and simultaneously entered into interaction with it. After all, like most of Aitken's film-based installations "THE SOURCE" also consists of fragmentary visual segments, which are viewed independently of one another and always in a different order.

Essentially, architecture, addresses the relationship between people and space both as a trade and as an art form. It creates a divide between inside and outside. How then should we understand a flowing form of architecture? The answer can be found in Doug Aitken's works, where the divides not only between inside and outside but also between humans and spaces, image and replica appear fluid.