Aernout Mik - Shifting, Shifting
Shifting, Shifting, at the Fruitmarket Gallery in May 2007, was an exhibition of four films by Aernout Mik - Vacuum Room, Scapegoats, Training Ground and Raw Footage.
Vacuum Room, Scapegoats and Training Ground are made according to Mik’s signature way of working, with professional, if anonymous, actors.
|
Mik casts them adrift in situations fraught with potential meaning – a political assembly under siege from protestors; an empty stadium in which people appear to have been taken hostage; a police training facility. |
 |
|
The actors move more or less aimlessly under Mik’s direction, the camera roving around as the action unfurls, continuously threatening to come to a perpetually deferred conclusion.
|
Carrie Paterson writes 'Aernout Mik’s Vacuum Room…mimics and mocks "civil society" through a part Brechtian, part relational aesthetics strategy of performance.
|
|
|
The drama unfolds in a senate or council room - intentionally ambiguous as to nation or region - where protesters, shoebangers, and flag wavers alternate with opposition leaders chanting "fascists"..... |
....projections encircle the viewer, who is placed "in" the scene and doubly implicated in the mediaspectacle - politics triangle via gaze: here the vantage point is equivalent to a security camera angle, but you can choose to sit on the protesters' floor.' |
|
Raw Footage is new in Mik’s work, in that it is made from unused documentary footage taken by ITN during the war in former Yugoslavia. Not broadcast at the time, apparently because of its lack of dramatic content, the material tracks the mundane reality of war in an urban, civilian space.
Raw Footage questions what is real or acted out, as well as our relationship with images viewed through the mass media. Its reality counterpoints the constructed fictions of the other films. |
|
|
Together, the four works enlist an unsettling sense of recognition, the artist’s work providing a context for a new understanding of human behaviour and experience.
Internationally renowned artist, Aernout Mik was born 1962 in Groningen, Netherlands. He lives and works in Amsterdam and has had exhibitions around the world. His work was recently exhibited at the Camden Arts Centre in London.
Aernout Mik has studied at Ateliers '63, Haarlem and at Academie Minerva, Groningen both in The Netherlands. Past awards have included the Dutch National Heineken Art Prize in 2002 and Mik was shortlisted for the Blue Orange Prize in 2005. He has also been chosen to represent the Netherlands at the 2007 Venice Biennale.
|
The Fruitmarket Gallery is located at 45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF and is open Monday to Saturday 11am to 6pm and Sunday 12 to 5pm. For more information, visit the Fruitmarket Gallery website. |
About the images
Scapegoats, 2006, Aernout Mik, video installation; digital video on hard disc; edition of 4 + 2 a.p
Vacuum Room, 2005, Aernout Mik, 6 screen video installation: digital video on hard disc; edition of 4 + 2 a.p
Training Ground, 2006, Aernout Mik, 2 screen video installation; digital video on hard disc; edition 4 + 2 a.p |