Into the Sun

the present only when it is already disappearing.” —R. D. Laing Doug Aitken is best known for his hypnotic, mural-size video installations, though he also works in film, takes photographs, and makes sound works. The interplay of art and media, image and sound has a primary role in his work: the sources of each cross-pollinate the other. Aitken’s work is distinct from that of his peers in its conceptual process. After engaging in extensive research, he approaches filming with specific guidelines or self-imposed parameters. Then he creates his visuals out of what he encounters. An example is diamond sea (1997), a multiscreen installation, shot in the Namibian desert of southwestern Africa, in which landscapes alternate with images of an animated industrial universe devoid of humans. Aitken, inspired by a large black spot on a map, went to Namibia in search of pure light. And for into the sun (1999), he outlined that the work would have an open structure with eighty percent of the piece comprised of still photographs that would then be refilmed.3 Aitken thus embarks on a project extremely well prepared but without a guarantee of success. He approaches his work with a fearlessness and resolve that imbue his finished products with an uncanny relevance and freshness. Aitken works to create something out of what is absent—a monsoon that never occurs, or a culture, such as Jonestown, that has disappeared. He seeks out the not-so-mythic icons that inform contemporary culture and abstractly presents an evocative description of their source, their setting, and their basic existence. Aitken works with a poetic, sublime knowledge informed by an innate understanding of the importance of these seemingly unessential notions. He has only appeared in a few of his pieces, those which can be identified as exploring more personal subjects. bad animal (1996) is a tightly structured narrative about the quest for fame in Los Angeles, Aitken’s home base. And The Longest Sleep: Pacific Ocean-Atlantic Ocean, Swimming the Panama Canal Asleep (1999), a photographic series “documenting” a seemingly impossible feat, is a reference to when Aitken himself drowned in the Pacific and miraculously was revived.