In February, the Aspen Art Museum (AAM) unveiled a new decade-long initiative. Titled “AIR,” the program aims to facilitate and amplify interdisciplinary conversations between visual art, music, science and philosophy. One of the first major events of the AIR initiative is just around the corner: a private artists’ retreat in late July, followed by a free public festival from July 29 to Aug. 1.
The theme of the 2025 inaugural AIR festival is “Life As No One Knows It.” The four-day event will feature side exhibitions in addition to those AAM is hosting by Sherrie Levine, Solange Pessoa and Carol Rama. A new sculpture by Anthea Hamilton is slated to be on display near the museum’s downtown entrance in the coming weeks.
While AIR will include rolling programs for commissioning creative output and research, the festival partners with local and national organizations to promote conversation, innovation and cultural evolution.
“Life As No One Knows It” asks the question: What does it mean to be human at a time when life itself must be redefined? Per AAM, “AIR 2025 creates the conditions for a different kind of attention — one that allows the subconscious to surface, and for meaning to be felt before it is named.”
The 2025 festival is inspired by artist Paul Chan’s years-long journey in developing artificial intelligence to create a synthetic self-portrait, and by Sara Imari Walker’s book from which this year’s event took its name. The festival will also feature filmmakers and tie in the legacy of the Aspen International Design Conference that ran from 1949 to 2006.
The festival will showcase visual and audio art across Aspen, with different works presented each day. Exhibits include sculpture, performance and sound, in addition to visual works. Among the offerings: a large-scale performance staged by Matthew Barney, a meditative set blending spiritual jazz with transcendental flute by recording artist André 3000, Cannupa Hanska Luger conjuring a chorus of whistles, an evolving sculptural ecosystem by Mimi Park, a three-act, Aspen-inspired opera by Jota Mombaça and an electro-acoustic film performance by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Rafiq Bhatia. Another audio presentation will have Sophia Al-
Maria join forces with musician Davia Spain to summon an otherworldly transmission — “part séance, part song-cycle, part science-fictional lament.”
All of these projects deliberately evoke the poetics of human acts like singing, breathing, dreaming and communicating. Participating AIR artists have specifically shaped their work to integrate a creative conversation with Aspen’s landscape, history and spirit. The exhibits invite new forms of communion, resistance and transformation.
AIR 2025 will also introduce keynote speeches on myriad forms of expression and philosophical interrogation. Inaugural Bluhm-Kaul Keynotes will feature renowned filmmaker and author Werner Herzog, artist and architect Maya Lin and architect Francis Kéré. The full speaking roster includes poet-economist Zoë Hitzig, novelist Álvaro Enrigue, psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster, artist Glenn Ligon, museum director Thelma Golden, architect Frida Escobedo and scientists Sara Imari Walker and Anil Seth, among many others.
The retreat ahead of this year’s festival aims to develop frameworks for artists as they continue to innovate with new technologies. Chan, Hitzig and writers Aria Dean and Evan Calder Williams are working closely with the AAM AIR curatorial team to lead the retreat. Aspen Institute, the Doris Duke Foundation and several other organizations are supporting the private convening.
AIR 2025 is presented in partnership with the Aspen Institute, Serpentine, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, Aspen Music Festival & School, the City of Aspen’s Wheeler Opera House, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, Aspen Center for Physics, Red Brick Center for the Arts, Jazz Aspen Snowmass, Aspen Words and Aspen Film.
To learn more about Aspen AIR 2025 and the many artists participating,
as well as register for free events, you can visit www.airaspen.org or the downtown museum.