The promotional image for Station To Station

All aboard Doug Aitken's art and music train

Station to Station promises to be a transcontinental 'nomadic happening' with artists, writers, bands and chefs

There's always been something a bit hippy-ish about the Californian multimedia artist, Doug Aitken. Gallery-goers have reveled in his trippy videos and installations with names like Acid Modernism and 99c Dreams. So, it shouldn't come as any surprise to hear his new project, described in a suitable mid-century parlance, as a 'nomadic happening'.

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If anything, this undersells Station to Station, which takes the ambitions of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and the founding spirit of say, the Lollapalooza festival, and pushes it in new and interesting ways. From 9 September until 28 September 2013 Aitken's specially commissioned train will carry a band of artists - including Stephen Shore, Kenneth Anger, Urs Fischer, Olaf Breuning, Rirkrit Tiravanija - musicians - look out for Ariel Pink, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Dan Deacon, No Age and Savages- writers - Dave Hickey, Barney Hoskyns and Rick Moody - and chefs - Alice Waters and Leif Hedendal, and the Edible Schoolyard Project - on a ten-station tour of America, from New York to San Francisco.

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The whole thing is sponsored by Levis, and partnered with galleries along the way, from MoMA/PS1 through to SF MoMA. Just what will take place on board, or happen at each stop is unclear, yet Aitken apparently want to capture the spirit of the age.

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"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," The LA Times reports Aikten as saying. "For a short time, the most interesting place in the country will be a moving target."

We'd certainly like to hitch a ride. For more, go here. To learn more about Doug Aitken, please take a look at our brilliant monograph, and for an earlier view of America, see Station To Station collaborator Stephen Shore's book American Surfaces.

Doug AitkenSurvey by Daniel Birnbaum, Interview by Amanda Sharp, Focus by Jörg Heiser, Artist's Choice text by Jorge Luis Borges, Writings by Doug Aitken

American video and installation artist Doug Aitken (b.1968) exploded onto the international art scene with his multi-screen work electric earth, which captivated audiences at the Venice and Whitney biennales in 1999. This work focused on the bizarre nocturnal experiences of a young man exploring the edges of Los Angeles, presenting dream-like sequences that rearrange the linear flow of narrative into a series of unforgettable, disjointed photographic tableaux. Like much of his work, it contrasts the high-tech speed of contemporary daily life with the monotony of the urban landscape. In other works he has explored the eerie, desterted atmosphere of Jonestown, Guyana, the site of the notorious mass suicide of religious cultists (monsoon, 1997); a remote diamond-mining region of Namibia, closed to outsiders since 1908 (diamond sea, 1997); and the collective dreams of India's Bollywood film industry (into the sun, 1999). Portraying some of contemporary art's most beautiful imagery, Aitken's installations encircle the viewer, creating a suspended, hyperreal portrait of contemporary life.

In the survey, curator and critic Daniel Birnbaum sets Aitken's art within the context of contemporary philosophy and the work of other recent artists who have explored expanded notions of time and space. In the Interview, Frieze publisher and critic Amanda Sharp discusses the artist's working methods, while in the Focus section critic Jörg Heiser looks at Aitken's i am in you (2000), a five-screen work centring on the imaginative experiences of a young girl. For his Artist's Choice Aitken has selected a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, whose description of altered realities through the distortions of mirrors and memory echoes the artist's own interests. Artist's Writings include Aitken's retelling of an unusual story he once heard from strangers, which served as the basis for subsequent video work.

Specifications:

Format: Paperback
Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in)
Pages: 160 pp
Illustrations: 150 illustrations
ISBN: 9780714839899

Daniel Birnbaum is a contributing editor of Artforum and the author of several books on art and philosophy, including The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl's Phenomenology (1998) and, with the artist Carsten Höller, Production (2000). From 1998 to 2000 he was the Director of IASPIS, an artists' residency programme based in Stockholm. Since 2001 he has been the Director of Portikus and the Städelschule Art Academy, both in Frankfurt.

Amanda Sharp the Publisher and Co-Founder of Frieze magazine and the Co-Director of the Frieze Art Fair.

Jörg Heiser has been Associate Editor of Frieze magazine since 1998. As a writer on art and contemporary culture he has contributed to German journals and newspapers including Texte zur Kunst, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Züricher Tagesanzeiger.

On the Contemporary Artists Series

"The boldest, best executed, and most far-reaching publishing project devoted to contemporary art. These books will revolutionize the way contemporary art is presented and written about."—Artforum

"The combination of intelligent analysis, personal insight, useful facts and plentiful pictures is a superb format invaluable for specialists but also interesting for casual readers, it makes these books a must for the library of anyone who cares about contemporary art."—Time Out

"A unique series of informative monographs on individual artists."—The Sunday Times

"Gives the reader the impression of a personal encounter with the artists. Apart from the writing which is lucid and illuminating, it is undoubtedly the wealth of lavish illustrations which makes looking at these books a satisfying entertainment."—The Art Book