Aernout Mik, Raw Footage

22 August - 21 September 2008
Mala Galerija, Slovenska cesta 35, Ljubljana

Raw Footage is a 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.
Raw Footage was produced by the artist and BAK, the outcome of a long-term collaboration.

Guest Curator: Maria Hlavajova, Artistic Director BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, NL

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

Maria Hlavajova (born 1971) is artistic director of BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht since 2000. She curated a three-part project Citizens and Subjects for the Dutch Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Hlavajova has organized numerous exhibitions and projects at BAK including (selection): Roman Ondák: The Day After Yesterday, 2007; Concerning "Knowledge Production": Practices in Contemporary Art, 2006; Adrian Paci, 2006; Concerning War, 2005; Gerrit Dekker: About no below, no above, no sides, 2005; Cordially Invited, episode 3, Who if not we...?, 2004; and Now What? Dreaming a better world in six parts, 2003. In 2004, Hlavajova curated Who if not we...?, an international collaborative project across Europe.

She is co-director of the tranzit network, a foundation that supports exchange and contemporary art practices in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. Prior to that she was a faculty member at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York from 1998-2002, co-curator of Manifesta 3, Ljubljana (2000), and director of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts in Bratislava from 1994-1999. Hlavajova lives and works in Amsterdam and Utrecht.

The project has been supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Mondriaan Foundation.

Opening hours: Tuesday - Sunday 10.00 - 18.00. Free admission.