electric earth, 1999
- Medium
- Video installation with eight channels of video (color, sound), eight projections, four-room architectural environment 9:50 minutes/loop
- Dimensions
- 9:50 minutes/loop Dimensions variable
- Accession Number
- 2000.13
- Copyright
© Doug Aitken; courtesy 303 Gallery, New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Victoria Miro, London; and Regen Projects, Los Angeles
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of David Teiger in honor of Jeremy Strick
The protagonist of electric earth is imagined as the last person on earth. Lying on a motel bed, he drowsily stares at a TV; he strolls along urban streets at night; and shortly after his image is captured on a 99 Cent store’s surveillance camera, the electricity emanating from car washes, street lamps, and vending machines sends him into a convulsive fit or mechanical dance. He twitches and pulsates in sync with radars, security scanners, and brake lights.
electric earth consists of eight projections in four rooms; this structure disjoints the viewer’s experience and parallels the frenetic time dimension the protagonist experiences. According to Aitken, traditional film and video structure experience in a linear way. But since time is more complex than that, Aitken asked himself, “How can I make time somehow collapse or expand, so it no longer unfolds in this one narrow form?”
