A white-haired girl wanders Richard Neutra’s landmark midcentury home in Silver Lake at evening, when she out of the blue encounters a mountain lion calmly purring — and a grand piano within the room begins to play, by itself, Philip Glass’ “Mad Rush.”
It’s a scene from “Lightscape,” the newest hard-to-explain creation by Los Angeles artist Doug Aitken. The 65-minute movie will premiere Saturday at Walt Disney Live performance Corridor with reside accompaniment by the Los Angeles Grasp Chorale and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a part of the Midday to Midnight daylong competition of recent music.
“Lightscape” will then transmogrify into an exhibition opening Dec. 17 on the Marciano Artwork Basis in L.A.’s Windsor Sq. neighborhood, the place Aitken’s movie will likely be “exploded” onto seven screens and prolonged with bodily paintings associated to the movie. Singers and musicians will frequently drop in on Saturdays and work together with the movie in actual time. A 3rd iteration, in partnership with IMAX, can also be within the works.
Aitken is mirrored in one among his artworks in his studio. His undertaking “Lightscape” is an immersive movie set up and efficiency in Disney Corridor and later will likely be an set up on the Marciano Artwork Basis.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
The phrase “multidisciplinary” is such a dry, tutorial time period for artwork that, theoretically, ought to really feel extra like a three-dimensional, surround-sound fireworks present. “Kaleidoscope” is a far preferable and extra colourful description of Aitken’s ambition right here, which takes beautiful, impressionistic and sometimes dreamlike photos of unusual individuals transferring via extraordinary California landscapes, and stirs them into seemingly improvised songs in addition to acquainted minimalist masterpieces by composers like Glass, Steve Reich and Terry Riley.
In a single passage, a person drives alongside L.A.’s concrete arteries, and several other girls on the road sing “freeway” in mystical harmonies. In one other, strangers sing collectively from their vehicles in a drive-in theater car parking zone, flashing their headlights on the glowing display — their distance and placement a reminder of the pandemic period.
Within the Disney Corridor efficiency, the identical Grasp Chorale members seen within the movie will likely be standing onstage and syncing their vocals to the mouths onscreen. This being L.A., a couple of celebrities flip up within the film, together with Natasha Lyonne and Beck, who will likely be a part of the Marciano run.
Lyonne, who will attend Saturday, seems in a sequence strolling up a parking storage at evening, then dancing in a resort room together with her real-life boyfriend, Bryn Mooser. She met Aitken years in the past via her buddy, Chloë Sevigny (“how I meet everybody, baby,” she stated).
“It just seemed like a fun foray into the darkness,” she stated, “one night only.”
As unfastened and impromptu as her scenes could seem, Aitken “really is a master of aesthetics,” Lyonne stated, “so I think that he had quite a vision for it that was pretty exacting. It was easy to sort of slip into his world, and really feel like other characters. I think that’s the joy of these things. I guess the more I become somebody who invents ideas or tableaux from the ether, it’s always very satisfying to turn yourself over and be of service to somebody else’s very concrete idea, because it absolves you of this need to try to bend and twist it to make it make sense. … In a way, they’re sort of like a series of paintings — but much more. I was quite flattered to be part of it.”
Aitken, 56, is an equally hard-to-explain individual. With ocean-gray eyes and a coiffed shock of white-blond hair, he virtually might go as a cousin of David Lynch. He has the same aw-shucks, genial method — simple to giggle and fast to supply a cup of tea — that belies the unusual hive of images buzzing inside his head.
Born and raised in Redondo Seashore, Aitken sprang from ArtCenter School of Design in Pasadena to an early profession in New York, taking part in with sculpture, mild shows, efficiency, movie and different media. His work has been projected on buildings, transferring practice vehicles and floating barges.
His mirror-clad home in Palm Springs, “Mirage,” bought a wink within the Showtime collection “The Curse.” Characters within the Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone present dropped Aitken’s identify in dialog — which he realized solely when his cellphone blew up with texts from mates.
“It was so weird,” Aitken stated, laughing. “I realized I’m part of someone else’s fiction.”
Aitken with untitled artworks that had been hand-sewn works and painted on material, to be exhibited at Regen Initiatives together with “Lightscape.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
However meta layers of surrealism are on model for Aitken, who stated he’s “really interested in that idea of, like, where the line between fiction and nonfiction gets blurred.”
He just lately acquired an previous home close to his studio in Mar Vista simply so he might strip its components for brand new artwork items. A couple of years in the past he bought an previous transmission restore store close by and transformed it right into a workshop the place he manufactures his sculptures and work with a small workforce.
Aitken spent so a few years listening to music created for his artworks (together with items by his good buddy Riley) that, “like some kind of evolutionary lizard in the Galapagos,” he says, “I’ve kind of grown a palette over time of, like, what I’m after.” He isn’t a educated musician, however he does hear music in his head. A couple of years again he began singing phrases and phrases in his automotive at evening, then had them sampled, looped and chopped as much as kind compositions.
A mutual buddy linked him to Grant Gershon, inventive director of the Grasp Chorale, and Aitken proposed making a music cycle.
“There were maybe 10 or 12 sheets of paper,” Gershon stated, “and each paper had a word or phrase on it. I think one of them was ‘freeway.’ Another was, ‘There was a man who lived here / he doesn’t live anymore.’”
Aitken stunned Gershon by asking if he might file Gershon improvising. “He just had me sing some melodies, or create sounds with my voice that might match or complement or counterpoint the words and phrases,” Gershon stated. Different singers from the Grasp Chorale later joined in and “laid the bricks of a cathedral one at a time,” Gershon stated, “layering and combining and building and stacking and removing.”
“It was going to be almost a vocal earthwork,” stated Aitken, who tends to assume and communicate in floating, unearthly ideas. “I wanted to have 30 to 80 vocalists in these different areas of the landscape, and a word or phrase is passed from person to person to person, creating a concentric ring or geometric patterns.”
This went on for nearly a 12 months — after which the pandemic hit.
In that bizarre, quiet time, the L.A. Phil approached Aitken a few fee. He proposed basing it on this quotidian phrase music cycle together with the prevailing instrumental items, and weaving the consequence into an interactive movie piece. “Lightscape” was born.
Aitken in his Culver Metropolis studio framed by “The River,” a kinetic mild and sound sculpture that can go on view on the Marciano Artwork Basis.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
“This project has more moving parts than I’ve ever had,” he stated.
With a skeleton crew and Aitken as digital camera operator, he filmed improvised moments with non-actors, positioned unusual and exquisite pockets of his house state to shoot, and organized for a coyote, a horse and that mountain lion to participate.
“It was kind of this, like, six-month fever dream,” he stated, citing inspirations akin to Robert Altman and John Cassavetes.
He had Steinway program a participant piano to carry out “Mad Rush” with Glass’ pounding taking part in type, and he had his roaming digital camera observe the massive cat’s response to the music.
“It seemed like it digged the piece,” Aitken stated, as wide-eyed and honest as he’s when speaking about all of his work. “Very mellow, actually.”
