Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers was jointly commissioned by Creative Time and The Museum of Modern Art. A multiscreen cinematic art experience, sleepwalkers was comprised of eight large-scale moving images projected onto the exterior of MoMA. The multiple screens collectively animated the building’s architecture with the nocturnal journeys of five city dwellers: a bicycle messenger, an electrician, a postal worker, a businessman, and an office worker.
Conceived by Aitken specifically for the museum’s broad expanses of glass, steel, and granite, sleepwalkers was inspired by the densely built environment of midtown Manhattan and portrayed the metropolis as a living organism fueled by the desires, energies, and ambitions of its inhabitants. While the installation thus suggested an inner life of the buildings, it also reclaimed modern architecture for personal expression and imbued anonymity with fluid human presence.
Photograph by Fred Charles
Doug Aitken
sleepwalkers
Manhattan
2007
