Refraction

Aernout Mik's work forcefully combines video and architecture to transform exhibition spaces into vivid, unsettling tableaux of irrational human behavior. In Refraction, the viewer comes upon an accident the moment after it has occurred: An overturned bus fills a screen, rescue workers are scrambling, and traffic appears backed up for miles. No victims of the accident are depicted, although their absence does not seem to strike anyone as peculiar. As the camera shifts its perspective from the inside of the bus to the backup of cars to the ditch in front of the bus, an unspoken antagonistic energy slowly builds between various players in the scene. Refraction is presented as a rear-screen projection on a slightly bent wall, the shape of which visually echoes the jackknifed carriage of the bus.