Video artist Doug Aitken has characterized his new installation of colossal, multi-part projections on the glass facades of the Museum of Modern Art as a way to "fold Manhattan inside out and create a kind of architecture that is living and flowing, a waterfall of information and ideas."

In his first public art installation in New York, most prominently displayed on the walls surrounding the museum's sculpture garden on West 54^th Street, five characters from different walks of life awake, arise, and begin their banal morning rituals in preparation for a day's work. The five narrative films, each about 14 minutes long, are projected three at a time. The relationship of the films to one another changes in random fashion, and with each grouping of characters, the viewer receives a different experience. Interspersed with the activities of the characters dressing, finding their way to work, and doing their jobs are images of urban signs and iconic objects that become super-graphic displays that echo the texture of city life.

The actors - three of them well-known and two largely unknown - move through space like sleepwalkers, void of expression beyond an occasional look of angst or ennui. Their repetitive motions, and the repetition of the videos in different combinations, becomes a metaphor for the different kinds of isolation always available in a city of millions.

Darkness confers abstraction to the narratives and their surroundings, which enhances a sense of visual inundation. Lighted buildings visible beyond the museum become part of the experience. A solitary figure dwarfed by the granite wall enclosing the sculpture garden, the trucks and busses that sometimes block the view, all become one with the visual stream. Like a musical piece by Steve Reich, Sleepwalkers creates a trance-like state that folds the viewer into the night.

Sleepwalkers by Doug Aitken is sponsored by MoMA and Creative Time. It runs daily from 5 pm - 10 pm through February 12. MoMA's sculpture garden will be open and free to the public for the showings. The actors are: Donald Sutherland, Tilda Swinton, Chan (Cat Power) Marshall, Ryan Donowho, and Seu Jorge. For a map of viewing locations, go to Creative Time.

Photographs © 2007 Peggy Roalf