PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Aernout Mik
b. 1962 in Groningen, The Netherlands; based in Amsterdam

Work in exhibition
Speaking in Tongues, 2013
Multi-channel video installation (HD video)

See all installation views at higher resolution: www.flickr.com/photos/parasophia/sets/72157656465258738

Aernout Mik has had large-scale solo exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, 2000), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, 2000), the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2009), and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2013). He represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and has participated in many international exhibitions around the world. He has also participated in several exhibitions in Japan, including Still/Moving (Kyoto, 2000), Yokohama Triennale 2001, and Aichi Triennale 2013. Mik’s works often consist of silent multi-channel videos with actors performing scenarios based on real social issues, projected in architectural settings that merge the viewer’s physical space with the space in the videos before them, thus making the theatrical performance in the video more of a real experience than seeing actual documentary footage.
At Parasophia, Mik presents one of his latest large-scale video installations, Speaking in Tongues, which draws parallels between religious rites and ritualistic practices at large corporations, pointing to the rise of a new, borderless, quasi-religious movement. The 300-actor film begins with corporate settings but increasingly shows hints of religious motifs and ceremonies, eventually evolving into a dramatic ritual that reaches a frenzied climax. This installation differs from Mik’s past work in that the staged fiction is juxtaposed with documentary footage from Pentecostal churches in places like Brazil. At both corporate self-actualization seminars and contemporary religious rituals that promise secular wealth, people begin “speaking in tongues,” chaos escalates, and the line separating the two dissolves into ambiguity.

• Kyoto Art Center