This week at Sundance, Doug Aitken exhibited a series of artist conversations via an interactive website and six-channel film installation. The Source was first shown at Tate Liverpool in 2012:
Excerpts from Doug's T Magazine interview about the project:
For me, the name the Source means where creativity begins. Is that what you were thinking?
I see it as trying to reduce and reduce and reduce. Bringing things back to a candid and immediate conversation between two people. Having something that has very little filtration, that is not reprocessed by a critic and is not repurposed through the filter of cultural history.
There’s also a lot of disciplines breaking down and bleeding into one another. You have Richard Phillips talking about making paintings based on media images through a process that he likens to architecture. Was that interdisciplinary instinct something you tried to draw out?
What surprises me, actually, is that culture isn’t more fluid with all the different mediums that exist. I’m constantly surprised how you see this regimentation between contemporary art here, existing primarily with the museums and galleries, and music is over there in this strange, archaic music industry. But at the same time it’s fascinating, ’cause if you and I were to sit down we would talk about all of these things. We would talk about music and cinema, architecture, art. In the actual popular discussion, there’s really no division. Within the capitalistic system, that’s where the division lies. I wanted to have something that was just about, in a very simple, humble way, someone talking in their own language about what they did. In the process you actually find that there’s this incredible amount of cross-pollination.
What will the physical manifestation of this project at Sundance look like?
What you have is a circular pavilion. It’s like a pie almost, divided into six parts. When one walks in, there are six films playing, all with their own audio, each one four minutes, and then six more replace those. It allows you to walk in and, if you’re engaged with Liz Diller talking about architecture, you can be immersed in that, and you can step into that section of the installation and follow that thread. The physical installation is mirrored in the website that we’ve designed. As you navigate it, you can find certain ideas and follow those ideas if you wish. Imagine if you are listening to Jacques Herzog talking about chaos, and you say, I’m kind of interested in that thread, so you follow “chaos” and it leads you to Ryan Trecartin.
Watch all the interviews on The Source website.