Aernout Mik's Crisis Videos Fill MoMA in 2009 Retrospective

In 2009, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a major retrospective of Dutch artist Aernout Mik, timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash. The exhibition, organized by longtime MoMA film curator Laurence Kardish, spanned multiple floors and featured large-scale video installations that enveloped viewers. At the entrance, Mik's silent 2001 work 'Middlemen' showed depressed traders amid a deserted trading floor, echoing contemporary financial turmoil as Goldman Sachs executives fled the city and stores closed. 'Vacuum Room' (2005) used six screens in a heptagonal space resembling a G20 meeting room, emptied of sound and speech, with armed figures suggesting an imminent hostage situation. The retrospective also included a new commission, 'Schoolyard' (2009), depicting a high school playground that transforms into a theater of slow-moving protests. Other works like 'Scapegoats' (2006) and 'Training Ground' (2006) featured armed men in public spaces, blurring lines between simulation and reality. 'Raw Footage' (2006) was the only video with sound, a faint crackle accompanying footage from Kosovo war ruins. Mik's videos, shot with surveillance cameras and edited in slow motion, created a haunting, critical ballet of contemporary crises without explicit commentary.