Deutsches Historisches Museum - Verf�hrung Freiheit. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 - Blog

‘Overloaded.’ criticised some reviewers. ‘Too many works.’ wrote others. But not one had found it ‘Too empty.’

This edition of our Tuesday Question has to do with quantity. And we posed it to our curator, Monika Flacke: 

Why are there 180 artists in the catalogue, and only 113 in the exhibition?

‘The museum space measures 1000 square metres, so we could not possibly exhibit all of the pieces. The works will also be distributed across the four venues. In Krakow, for instance, there is a lot of space, so it will be possible to show these large-format videos, which could not be shown here, because each video display requires about 500 square metres of space (I’m exaggerating a bit). But Aernout Mik’s video, for instance, requires a certain minimum amount of space, and with only 1000 square metres available, we couldn’t show only his video, and it would also have overshadowed the other works. There are also some very large works in the exhibition, and we did not want to do without them. That would have destroyed the coherence, which is what remains after the exhibition is long over. As I said, some of the works will be shown at the other destinations. Here, in Berlin, we hung the exhibition strictly according to space and interconnections. There wasn’t really any other choice.’

Regarding Mik’s Installation:

‘The stock market has come to a standstill; the hectic pace of the trading floor, usually vibrating with energy, has given way to a tense standstill. Mik created the installation in 2001, a year of the financial crisis. Awareness of the crisis has not dissipated since then. It has even become an increasingly common phenomenon, in conjunction with the globalisation of society. The video presents not only the Zeitgeist at the start of the millennium, but also that of today. Middlemen has kept its relevance throughout the continuing financial crisis.’

(Catalogue: The Desire for Freedom, Art in Europe since 1945, p. 193)

The entire video by Aernout Mik (Room 7, ‘99 Cent’, Middlemen) can be viewed in our online catalogue.

Interview with Aernout Mik by Peter Burchett:

Aernout Mik from peter burchett on Vimeo.