Doug Aitken

“We are all affected by the time we are born into, and of course that feeds into your work. Society is based on storytelling - religious myths, opera, film - and 1968 was always seen as a time of rupture and fragmentation. I have always been interested in those words.”

“In our daily lives, we see ourselves often in very reductive ways. I want to explore motion, change and flux, whether we are looking in the mirror or seeing ourselves in our surroundings. The singular view of self contradicts the act of living.”

“Art is always a search for understanding, and the different levels and frequencies of that search feel completely comfortable and natural to me.”

“I'm really a believer in being in situations that feel new and awkward and different. And I love that feeling of being in motion - that sense you find when you're traveling.”

“I think about museums often. There are things that I want museums to do that they often don't. For me, I like it when there's a system within the museum that can continuously change - whether it's a museum that is nomadic or one that's designed so the building can shape-shift. I like restless spaces, and I want to be engaged.”

“I'm not a journalist; I'm probably a horrible interviewer. The one small thing I have is I'm curious, and I'm interested in who I'm with.”

“We are engaging with so many art forms at once in the 21st century, but we're presented with them in a way that is so isolated.”

“The idea of a 'happening' is that there is little distance between the viewer and it, whatever 'it' is. It's an experience that's on-going and evolving.”

“I think there is a hunger for things that wake you up, something that makes you peel back your eyes, that reminds you that you are alive. Art is at its best when it is in the 'now.'”

“Our culture is not this thing to be seen from a distance. We need to be embracing the friction of it all - that is where the energy is.”

“The 'Station to Station' film has been fascinating to create. It feels as though it made itself in a way, and after awhile, the film told us what it needed and began to sculpt itself.”

“I have always just made things. I don't see what I make as being defined by a medium or aesthetic. It probably comes more from a fundamental restlessness, an attempt to create tools for questioning or understanding, and I have always been interested in using a wide spectrum of mediums to do this.”

“The 'Station to Station' film is made entirely out of one-minute films, and each of the 62 minutes is a completely different person, place or encounter.”

“We're moving into an era when things are dematerialised and much more holographic. Floating above the physical world and the geographic map, there's another landscape that's constantly changing - something like a cloud - of communication, information, exchange and commerce.”