Blow Debris similarly suggests narrative but prefers to offer it in the form of a drifting, almost aimless experience; the piece enacts a passage or journey as we follow a group of nude wanderers in a desert landscape. As with Electric Earth, what could be postmodern anomie becomes celebratory drifting. Aitken spurns a romantic nostalgia for a pristine past and its untrammeled landscapes in favor of the stories suggested by the discarded remnants and detritus that litter the expanse of the Mojave Desert. He also fetishizes the feeling of the desert. Even in the cool, dark space of the gallery rooms housing the huge projections, you sense the lassitude of the characters and time seems to slow down. And then things explode, time reverses, and you are compelled to walk around some more, from dislocation to relocation and back again.
Waitress
Jimmy is married to the abusive Frank, but she's building a nest egg so she can leave. For a year, she's been deaf as a result of one of his beatings. One night, he pushes her over the stairwell, and she ends up in the hospital. When a charred body in her husband's car is pulled from a pond, the cops want to talk to her, but she bolts for her sister's, loses her savings pass-book, and then learns someone has emptied her bank account. She's goes on the run, with the same cops on her trail, and eventually realizes Frank may not be dead. Getting back her money, facing Frank, satisfying the police, and finding her freedom may be more than she can handle. Written by
