The video seems to differ sharply from the customary features of Mik’s work. For the first time, the images are accompanied by sound and constitute documents of “real” life rather than something deliberately staged by the artist. These variations help, however, to establish the complex relationship between work and public – halfway between ambiguous incomprehension and morbid fascination – typical of all the artist’s work. Here too, feelings of frustration build up in the viewer, who can reconstruct no narrative thread but is in any case captured by playing on the voyeuristic element typical of the mass information society. The reference in the title and the composition of the work to the dynamics of a certain type of publication or “truth TV” serves to attract the viewer, who is hooked by the promise of a horrifying event, tragedy or drama transformed into spectacle without wondering why, without looking for the underlying facts or reasons. These images seem in fact far more absurd and unbelievable than the fabrications engineered by the artist in previous works, such as a massive traffic accident and a colossal stock exchange crash.
Mik thus reverses his customary artistic practice but obtains the same effect in making us aware of the sheer lunacy of a society in which children or old people take up arms in the name of centuries-old nationalistic sentiments. The critical attack is, however, aimed above all at the viewer. While exposing the media’s censorship and manipulation of information, the artist is primarily concerned to challenge the common sense of decency of people who feel a morbid curiosity or attraction with respect to these images but nevertheless remain inert and passive.

Aernout Mik (The Netherlands, 1962)

Raw Footage is an assemblage of television footage shot during the civil war in former Yugoslavia but discarded by the news agencies not particularly interesting or useful for the purposes of coverage. Commonplace but incredible at the same time, the scenes bear witness to the war in all its “rawness” with non-manipulated images, as the title of the work suggests. Soldiers and civilians intermingle. Shooting and fires form a background to the actions of ordinary people doing their jobs or walking through the streets.