Off the Timeline

Off the Timeline

This exhibition features works by 31 students from Aernout Mik's current class at the Kunstakademie Münster in Germany. The students, who spend an average of four years in the class, vary in age and development. While their primary focus is on video, the exhibition also includes photography, performance, painting, installation, and sculpture. The works explore a richness of themes: new forms of living and working, family and origins, patriotism, identity, vulnerability, health, gender, cosplay, skin and intimate touches, remembering or forgetting, Buddhism and repetition, technological utopia and dystopia, how the digital transforms us, trauma, policing, and climate activism, among others. These themes are approached both in a documentary style and through speculative fiction, or a combination of the two.

This exhibition emphasizes the shared learning experience in German art academies, in contrast to the more individual guidance in Dutch academies. For Aernout Mik, this collective aspect is an essential part of his teaching philosophy. He sees himself not as a hierarchical professor, but as a moderator who fosters a horizontal learning environment where students and teachers collaborate and build a close-knit community. The exhibition reflects this collaboration between students and professor.