The New York Times has a piece on a fascinating bit of installation art by Doug Aitken called Sleepwalkers, which debuted at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Tuesday evening. Actually, it debuted on the museum, since the work consists of video projections on the architecture of the buildings, turning constructions designed to hold and display art into actual artistic works themselves. Using Donald Sutherland, the wonderful actress Tilda Swinton (other half of the other John Byrne, the Scots playwright and painter, not the comics one), singers Cat Power and Seu George (best known to many for his Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs in The Life Aquatic) and Ryan Donowho, the projections compress the nocturnal ‘day’ of these characters as they go through their night work.
Yes, yes, very interesting and artistic, bringing art outside of the gallery and all that, but nothing to do with comics, you say? Well, perhaps at first glance not, but I’d still recommend going to MoMA’s site and having a look at the online presentation of Sleepwalkers because it is some terrific visual art and if there is one thing comics readers like it is good visual art. The compressed time (which may be a requirement of the work but also functions as a handy shorthand for modern, busy city life) and cross-cutting between the subjects may be tried and tested movie devices, but to my eye they owe as much to the sequential comics panels and their ability to generate an entire tale with only a few images, relying as much on the viewer’s imagination to fill in the gaps between the frames to complete the story being told. Sleepwalkers will be projected daily onto MoMA at 11 West 53rd Street, NYC from 5 to 10pm until February 12th. For the rest of us who can’t see it first hand, check MoMA’s online presentation.
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