Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a parasite that takes control of ants. The fungus grows on their exoskeleton, invades their brains, and manipulates the insect’s further decisions. Formicula then moves purposefully to where the fungus finds optimal living conditions, bites and dies. And Ophiocordyceps unilateralis has been doing that for at least 48 million years. That’s why this mean Crusted Ball Mushroom would be the ideal crest creature for Aernout Mik. The armored state power that the Dutch video artist has featured in his fake documentaries for 30 years always loses control of its function at some point. As if remotely controlled, the executive forces then suddenly operate in matters of self-disarmament or willingly sacrifice themselves to the absurd.
The two new 40-minute works by Aernout Mik, “Double Bind” and “Threshold Barriers”, which now lead a dialogue about the appearances of special forces at Frankfurt’s Schirn, show this irritating loss of authority in a static and a flowing version. In the two-channel work “Threshold Barriers”, bleeding demonstrators and police officers carry out a long ritual of mutual encirclement and undressing in a barricade made of barriers, poles and bulky waste. In the video triptych “Double Bind” across the room, a heavily armed counter-terrorist unit moves through a French city and suburban settlement, where they slowly lose discipline and composure.
Film still from Aernout Mik’s “Double Bind” from 2018.
(Photo: Aernout Mik, courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid)
The squad, which is initially aimed at the area in a martial combat formation, eventually tumbles out of an emergency vehicle, crawls on all fours in a duck march over the sidewalks, presses their faces against the walls of the houses. Confusion and exhaustion spread without the troops losing the tense seriousness of a real mission. Concentrated, armored men and women sit on the sidewalks, disassemble submachine guns and group the parts neatly on the sidewalk. Or they invade a white plastic landscape that serves as a sterile break room where the half-naked police push around.
As absurd as it sounds, Aernout Mik does not ridicule the armed civil service with these irrational delimitations. Rather, he turns them back into vulnerable people. The stubborn goal-orientation of her assignments suddenly takes on a questioning aspect. Devotion to learned command structures gradually dissolves into a sense of liberating relief. Above all in the expectations of the viewers, who are conditioned by media consumption to clear attributions of good and bad conflict parties.
Mik modifies the situation in such a way that the protagonists can no longer fulfill their role in the human ant colony
Aernout Mik has repeatedly implemented this method of grotesque obedience questioning in the most elaborately staged scenarios. Mik used the Yugoslav wars as a background in several projects, for example to swap the perception of guards and guarded in a gym that was converted into a prison camp with amazing subtlety, until good and bad could no longer be distinguished. Aernout Mik has also repeatedly portrayed the relationship between refugees and camp guards as reversible. But he also transformed a stock exchange or a parliamentary committee meeting into places for special actions. Brokers moved as if completely unobserved. Demonstrators and politicians rolled out their own program in one room as if the other group were empty.
Mik’s starting point is always the apparently asymmetrical balance of power, like that between an ant and a fungus spore. The video artist as a manipulative parasite then modifies the powers of domination by interfering with the social laws of nature in such a way that the protagonists can no longer fulfill their predetermined roles in the human ant colony. And finally, what is lawful invades a liberating weariness.
Film still from Aernout Mik’s “Threshold Barriers”, 2022.
(Photo: Aernout Mik, courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid)
For “Threshold Barriers”, which was specially produced for the large room installation at the Schirn, the irritating role-playing game is particularly close to absurd theatre. Even the costumes of the protest department are more reminiscent of a techno parade. Cheetah-print raincovers, golden masks like those worn by rappers, toadstool hoodies that look like expensive branded designs, or a funny rabbit costume show little in common with the black block, which otherwise fights with the police. On the other hand, the nice-looking riot police officers, despite their combat uniforms and blood-smeared faces, appear like a special unit for de-escalation training.
However, Aernout Mik’s staging of the slipping use of power is by no means just a critique of the threateningly armed and faceless state power. Especially in the protest formats against the police, there are fixed roles on both sides that make these confrontational situations appear like rituals in a game of cops and robbers. The mushrooms that attack the demonstrators are then more of an ideological nature and force them to think in terms of the enemy. But between the two, Aernout Mik discovers an in-between realm, the freedom of the absurd. And that suddenly makes the opponent very human.
Aernout Mike, Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfort. Until October 3, 2022.