Doug Aitken (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon))

Doug Aitken is a young Californian video and installation artist who has risen to international prominence with works such as his multi-screen video environment "electric earth". Aitken's subjects explore the deserted spaces of Bollywood film sets in India; Jonestown, Guyana, the site of the notorious mass suicide of religious cultists; and a remote diamond-mining region of Namibia, closed to outsiders since 1908. His environments are vivid, elusive and dreamlike. This monograph explores the artist and his work. It features a discussion of Aitken's working methods by Amanda Sharp; an examination of Aitken's art within the context of contemporary philosophy and the work of other artists who have explored expanded notions of time and space; a study by Jorg Heiser of Aitken's "i am in you", a five-screen work centring on the imaginative experiences of a young girl; "Artist's Choice", for which the artist has selected a short story, "Funes the Memorious", by Jorge Luis Borges, whose description of altered realities through the distortions of mirrors and memory echoes the artist's own interests; and "Artist's Writings" - Doug Aitken's writings include his retelling of an unusual story he once heard from strangers he met in the desert and which served as the basis for a subsequent work.