Doug Aitken's Station to Station project will travel via a specially designed train seen in the rendering above. Image courtesy Doug Aitken
Don't Miss Our Ongoing Live Coverage
If there's one thing experimental artist Doug Aitken knows how to do, it's make a scene. He rolls with famous friends, projects cinematic experiences onto whole blocks of Manhattan, and generally makes big ideas happen. And now, he's taking his act on the road. Or, well, actually the rails.
Aitken's Station to Station: A Nomadic Happening tour will travel to 10 different locations by rail on a train the artist himself designed that is intended to be a "kinetic sculpture [that will] act as a cultural studio," according to an announcement released today. The artist will curate a site-specific event at each of the Station to Station stops thanks to contributions from the likes of experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, artist Liz Glynn, and digital media artist Aaron Koblin. The tour will also feature music from Charlotte Gainsbourg, Dirty Projectors, Twin Shadow, and Dan Deacon. It's also getting some food consulting love from from Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters.
"This is a fast moving cultural journey, a constant search over the new horizons of our changing culture. Grounded in some basic questions—Who are we? Where are we going? And, at this moment, how can we express ourselves?—our intention is to create a modern cultural manifesto," Aitken said in a statement. "For a short time, the most interesting place in the country will be a moving target."
Interestingly, his experimental art train-hop is just the latest in a line of locomotive-powered tours. Mumford and Sons, along with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, took a 14-car train from Oakland to New Orleans for six Railroad Revival Tour shows in 2011 — a trek that was captured in the documentary Big Easy Express. And taking a cue from a Grateful Dead-led train tour in the 1970s, EDM stalwart Skrillex and friends rolled through Canada on the Full Flex Express tour in 2012. Hopefully, however, Aitken's journey will fare better than those two outings. The Railroad Revival had to cancel its 2012 Willie Nelson-headlined tour and the Full Flex Express' 2013 tour never even left the station.
Aitken's trek will hit the rails in September and along the way raise money through ticket sales and donations to support non-traditional programming at seven partner museums across the country in 2014. No word yet on what exactly each stop on the tour will entail, but considering Aitken is the one whose "Sleepwalkers" exhibit at New York's MoMA in 2007 projected images over an entire city block, it should be—if nothing else—an experience.
"Station to Station hopes that this liquid platform will empower the artists to make work that could not be realized elsewhere," the project's executive producer Molly Logan said in a statement.
Station to Station begins in New York on September 6 and from there travels to Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, Santa Fe, Winslow (Arizona), Barstow (California), Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Wired, an exclusive media partner for Station to Station, will be along for the entire ride, bringing updates from every stop and the journey along the way.
