Doug Aitken Wins 2012 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize

The Nam June Paik Art Center announced today that Doug Aitken has been selected as the solo recipient of the 2012 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize. The press release praised "Aitken’s enthusiastic pursuit of experimentalism and interdisciplinary collaboration" and said his work "open up a world where time, space, and memory are fluid concepts".

The Nam June Paik Center (seen below) established the prize in 2009, with the aim to acknowledge "artists who, like Paik, have opened up new horizons and had a tremendous impact in the field of art through their relentlessly experimental attitudes and ground breaking works." In the first year four artists were given the prize: Seung-Taek Lee, Eun-Me Ahn, Ceal Floyer, and Robert Adrian X. Bruno Latour, an academic, was the recipient of the 2010 prize. There doesn't seem to have been a 2011 prize, and as of this year the prize has been restructured to focus strictly on artists.

The ceremony will be held at Nam June Paik Art Center at 5pm tomorrow (July 20, 2012), in celebration of the eightieth anniversary of Paik’s birth. Aitken will be presented with the cash award and invited to hold a solo exhibition at the space in the second half of 2013.




Above: the Centre's library and multi-media archive.

Doug Aitken | Sleepwalkers

Doug Aitken
Sleepwalkers
New York City, USA: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012
31.75 x 31.75 cm
Boxed work that includes a double-sided poster, 12” picture disk record, a 96-page visual diary, two flipbooks, CD soundtrack and DVD.
Limited Edition of 1000 signed and numbered copies


“The Sleepwalkers box is an experimental collaboration between Doug Aitken, Princeton Architectural Press, and DFA Records. Conceived in the spirit of multimedia editions of the past, such as Andy Warhol’s Index and the mid sixties artist edition/journal Aspen, the Sleepwalkers box is designed to encourage you to create your own multisensory experiences as you explore a kaleidoscopic universe of printed images, motion pictures, and audio recordings drawn from Doug Aitken’s groundbreaking 2007 Museum of Modern Art public film installation. In your hands, Aitken’s enigmatic story fragments, characters, and images become the building blocks of a new interactive multimedia work.”



Available here, for $300 US.

Doug Aitken | Song 1

Pitckfork reports that Doug Aitken's exterior projection piece Song 1 will include a soundtrack featuring covers of the song I Only Have Eyes for You by Beck, No Age, Devendra Banhart, the LCD Soundsystem and others. The work runs from March 22nd to May 13th at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.

Update: Greg.org has a preview, here.

Update #2: Artforum's post on the opening can be read here.