On Friday, the Barbican Cinema hosted the UK premiere of Doug Aitken’s gripping rail movie Station to Station. The toast of Sundance earlier this year, it is a pacey, atmospheric record of the 4,000 mile train journey made across the US from New York City to San Francisco in the Summer of 2013 by Aitken and a multifarious cast of participating artists, musicians and performers ranging from Mavis Staples, Patti Smith, William Eggleston, Giorgio Moroder and Ed Ruscha to Cat Power, Urs Fischer, Olafur Eliasson and Beck as well as lesser-known buskers, auctioneers, marching bands and blues singers. Talking to Miranda Sawyer afterwards, Aitken described the movie which is sub-divided into 62 one-minute films of the people, places and perspectives that made up the trip as “an exquisite corpse” with one of the most powerful presences being the train itself, which he had transformed into a kinetic light sculpture, hurtling across the ever-changing American continent and stopping in ten locations ranging from major cities to off-grid wildernesses where yet more special happenings took place. (Perhaps tellingly, Aiken was reticent about who actually lived on the train and who just hooked up with it en route.)
Whatever its passenger makeup, this road—or rail—show is now poised for a new incarnation, which will take the form of an eponymous 30-day happening starting this Friday. Aiken will be colonising the Barbican with a multifarious extravaganza of more than 100 artists/50 performances/events/residencies. There will be some overlap with the American extravaganza, including the yurts containing Urs Fischer’s disco-balled Honeymoon Suite and Ernesto Neto’s immersive Soul Breathing environment now being pitched by the Barbican’s lake, weekly servings of Ed Ruscha’s cactus omelettes and a UK recreation of Olaf Breuning’s opulent multicoloured smoke performance, which first took place by the East River in New York. However, most of the events and residencies are unique to the UK such as Mike Figgis (who was in last night’s audience) editing a movie in situ and personal appearances by the likes of Albert Oehlen, Martin Creed and Anri Sala. “I want to make a space for curious people—no two days will be the same” promised Aitken, to which Sawyer quipped, “it will also be a space that nobody can leave as no one can ever find their way out of the Barbican.”