Doug Aitken

Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Essays by Francesco Bonami, Henry Grunwald, Jorg Heiser and Gijs van Tuyl.

The installation "Electric Earth," debuted at the 1999 Venice Biennale, brought international recognition to the video and media artist Doug Aitkin. In the piece, a dancer roams a transitory realm of wasted landscapes. Aitken, whose protagonists are usually natural landscapes and cityscapes, here links the electrified structures of our urban world with the nervous system of the human body. The piece, with its pop-surrealist overtones, also reveals Aitken's roots as a director of music videos. This artist's book, laid out in a landscape format, presents fascinating views of natural and urban lanscapes and structures from the video. Gijs van Tuyl, in his essay, writes, "You don't have to look through it passively from A to Z...it offers up a space in which the reader can move freely...in order to create a story in the here and now, in the flow of time."