Acquisitions/
2002/
Doug Aitken/
Thaw

Thaw, a three-channel digital video projection, is part of a recent series of works entitled “New Ocean.”  The location is a glacial mass in Alaska.  This syncopated, split-screen portrait of a place turns the natural processes of warming ice into an almost theoretical observation on the more abstracted notions of flow and change.  In Aitken’s vocabulary, thaw—a word describing a physical change—becomes as much a description of a set of sounds as it is of images.  Significantly, the artist combines natural, recorded sounds and electronically generated manipulations into new, almost symphonic compositions. Describing his practice, the artist uses language apt for a discussion of this work: “I have a restlessness with the way a photograph captures time…The static quality of the ‘frozen’ image or decisive ‘moment’ is not enough…I would like to smash a photograph, open it and see what’s inside.  Maybe then this so-called ‘frozen’ time could expand and contract.  In that sense, images are like liquids…” In this way, Thaw stages a metaphoric, even philosophical, commentary on an art historical transition from still (frozen) to filmic (liquid) images.