Doug Aitken’s New Film Is a Mystical Ode to the Landscape of Los Angeles

“It’s a landscape that’s forever changing,” says the artist Doug Aitken of Los Angeles. “If you’re someone who’s curious it can be a magical, mystical place because it is so effervescent. It’s constantly transforming. If you’re trying to hold on to something and you’re looking for security, you should probably leave.”

I’m speaking with Aitken at his studio in Venice on an overcast morning. His words are particularly resonant in light of the recent fires that have ravaged the city. So is his film Lightscape, a large-scale immersive artwork on view at Marciano Art Foundation. Structured around a 12-chapter “song cycle,” Lightscape traverses the various ecologies of Southern California and the West, both natural and man-made. Parking lots and strip malls, lonely gas stations and majestic deserts. In Lightscape the city becomes a symphony, a swirling cacophony of sights and sounds.

The film’s characters repeat abstract lines such as “you can lose yourself in an instant” and “if we keep moving, are we safe?” – refrains that emphasise the volatility of modern life, especially in Southern California, a place where fires give way to floods and mudslides follow droughts. It is a land of striking contrasts, where attraction and danger walk hand-in-hand, a land of great beauty, and a land of light and escape.

Lightscape began via a collaboration with the LA Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale. The film’s score – which features original compositions by Aitken as well as works by Philip Glass and Steve Reich – predated the visuals. When it came time to write the film, Aitken knew he didn’t want to create a traditional narrative. 

“There are alternate directions that aren’t the straight line with the convenient beginning, middle, and end,” says Aitken. “I felt that if I took a risk and did something that didn’t have that kind of structure but instead was more propelled by music and sound than it was by dialogue and traditional language, [it] could take us somewhere else.” Many of the film’s scenes were improvised, with actors casted on the ground. Viewers are likely to recognize a few familiar faces; musician Beck and actress Natasha Lyonne both star in the film.

The narrative in Lightscape unfolds across a series of enormous screens. “I wanted multiple stories all moving simultaneously,” Aitken explains. “To me, that feels a little bit closer to how I see the world. It’s a fragment of different experiences that are just coming at you like a kaleidoscope and you piece it together the best you can. You remember some things and conveniently erase others. You’re authoring this huge, sprawling narrative all the time that’s called life.” 

Aitken, who grew up in Redondo Beach, has always been fascinated by landscapes, be they urban or rural. He is known for his large-scale interventions, ranging from video installations projected onto the facades of museums (Sleepwalkers, Song 1), to a traveling sculpture in the form of a moving train (Station to Station). “Why do we just automatically go to the museum or gallery to see art when we live in this vast, sprawling world of radical diversity?” says Aitken. “There’s so much to our landscape, whether it’s urban or remote and desolate. Why can’t we have a voice in those alternative spaces? Why can’t art be something we seek out?” It’s a desire that strikes me as inherently American – the urge to claim the land as one’s own. 

Lightscape is accompanied by weekly live musical performances and activations. For Aitken, art is about the transference of energy, an experience viewers are likely to have when encountering the work. “An artwork can dance with you,” Aitken says. “It can move and circulate.” 

Lightscape by Doug Aitken is on show at Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles until 17 May 2025.