Aernout Mik

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst presents the solo exhibition Raw Footage/Scapegoats by Dutch artist Aernout Mik. Raw Footage/Scapegoats is a two-part project on the experience and depiction of war, and how normality and extremity are interwoven in wartime situations.

In Raw Footage, a two-channel video installation, Mik works with documentary footage for the first time. The installation is made of raw, unedited images of the war in former Yugoslavia, which the artist unearthed after searching for months in the media archives of Reuters and Independent Television News (ITN). In search of other layers of reality, Mik focuses his attention on the war in former Yugoslavia with the aim of subverting the superficial, yet paradoxically spectacular imagery of war we know from mass media. The video installation Scapegoats, on the other hand, is a fiction staged by the artist questioning the contemporary condition in which waging war is a devastating yet ever present feature. The video seems to show a wartime conflict taking place in Western Europe. Groups of soldiers, prisoners, and armed civilians are involved in a continuous power struggle, in which the role of victim and oppressor constantly shifts. Raw Footage/Sc apegoats is produced by the artist and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst. The project and exhibition are the outcome of a long-term collaboration with the artist.

Raw Footage/Scapegoats is realized in partnership with Treaty of Utrecht and is presented within the framework of its multi-part project Kunst in Oorlog ( http://www.kunstinoorlog.nl ). Additional support has been generously provided by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, Mondriaan Foundation, and ThuisKopie Fonds.

accompanying program Tuesday 31 October 2006 at 20.00 hrs Lecture by Ralph Rugoff on the work of Aernout Mik.

Aernout Mik (born 1962 in Groningen, lives and works in Amsterdam) presented his work recently in Universal Studios-beijing, Beijng, 2006; Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 2006; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2006; Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, 2006; and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2005.

Pressetext

Aernout Mik
Raw Footage / Scapegoats