Today the iPhone is supposed to satisfy our need for human closeness. DOUG AITKEN questions in his works where that will lead.
In the world of mobile networks, Doug Aitken’s highly reserved protagonist, played by Chloë Sévigny, rushes from one motel to the next – “Check in, check out.” She moves from one sterile, interchangeable room to the next without ever arriving anywhere. She is blind to the landscapes she passes through – the typical lot of a business traveler performing her job. She has no destination because she has no starting point. All of the cities and countries her job takes her to, and which she recites with a hollow voice, are mere stopover points. They leave no traces and they are interchangeable. Her windows to the world are her laptop and iPhone.
Aitken has already addressed communication in the digital age in his work several times. His sculpture “Twilight” (2014) takes a typical American coin-operated telephone – actually functional analog devices with receivers and coin receptacles that are often found vandalized and weathered – and turns it into a work of art. Aitken’s version has an elegant white synthetic resin surface and glows from within. It reacts to viewers, glowing more brightly the closer someone approaches – a compelling promise in the dark space it is shown in. Ironically, it is precisely this non-verbal form of communication and the portrait format with rounded-off edges that make it reminiscent of an iPhone. The artist replicates one of the latter, magnified immensely, in his piece “Listening” (2001) – but this phone has a ruined back, a phenomenon that is all too familiar. The viewer is denied communication here as the display becomes inaccessible.
Those who now view Doug Aitken as a pessimist will stand corrected by his film “Station to Station” (2015). The gigantic communication project, which encompasses the entire breadth of the United States, is the optimistic counterpart to “Black Mirror”. It is a celebration of artistic teamwork and human exchange. Real interactions take place on the train repurposed as Aitken’s control center as it hurtles across the country. Happenings take place in all of the train stations it passes that combine art, live music and spectacle and which include all kinds of artists. “Never stagnate, never stop! Exchange, connect and move on.” A statement on analog collaboration that may well make some viewers feel nostalgic.
Doug Aitken’s “Black Mirror” (2011) is a grim commentary on capitalism’s Digital Revolution. The old-fashioned telephone receiver, seen uselessly hanging off its cable in the film, is of course no coincidence. No connection can be made over the landline; the phone just emits an error tone. Instead, the short, trivial conversation between the protagonist and her life partner takes place via an iPhone. The old-school phone has had its day, seems to be the message. Digital networking and globalization destroy human relationships. Aitken’s protagonist prefers to shoot diagrammatic simulated bodies in her free time rather than meet real people.
"Black Mirror" is a culmination of the inability to communicate. Short sequences showing the arms of a couple touching reveal the need for human closeness, which Aitken’s protagonist no longer gets to experience. This closeness is substituted by the impersonal show put on by pole dancers. The protagonist becomes more and more isolated, turns away from humans and towards the multimedia appliances that feign the desperately lacking intimacy. The title chosen for the installation, “Black Mirror”, is a colloquial English term for the displays of digital terminal devices. In the SCHIRN exhibition, actual black mirrors surround the screens in the installation, endlessly reflecting the film on the screens and alluding to the incessant, continuous advance of digitalization.
