Shifting Shifting - Aernout Mik

Shifting Shifting by Aernout Mik consisted of four films, Vacuum Room, Raw Footage, Scapegoats and Training Ground, all curated and produced in a collaboration among the four institutions Camden Arts Centre (London), Fruitmarket (Edinburgh), Artverein Hannover and Bergen Kunsthall. To this publication, which was made for the exhibition, Jenni Lomax (director of the Camden Arts Centre, London) contributes a preface introducing Aernout Mik as one of the most acclaimed video artists of his generation. In staged situations, often with a large number of actors, Mik explores group dynamics and role-determined human behaviour. Often the course of events is played out at crucial moments when some kind of crisis threatens to break down the social order. In other words, an ambivalent mixture of realism and play-acting arises.