Bertille Bak presents her video installation “Mineur Mineur” in the exhibition The Irreplaceable Human – The Conditions of Creativity in the Age of AI at the Louisiana in Denmark. Filmed in five countries, this project addresses the theme of child labor in mines: in India for coal, in Indonesia for tin, in Thailand for gold, in Bolivia for silver, and in Madagascar for sapphires. Marked by the contrast between the apparent lightness of children’s play and the harsh reality that robs these young workers of their childhood, this work bears the characteristic traits of Bertille Bak’s œuvre.
The exhibition sets up three sites in which our relationship to creativity is being negotiated (childhood, work, AI itself) before focusing on the question of process through chapters on ‘cross-pollination’ and ‘time’.
“Mineur Mineur” is included into the chapter on childhood, which opens the exhibition. This chapter focuses on a tension inherent in our understanding of childhood: the dream of the “creative” child on the one hand, and on the other the societal attempts to shape children into “useful” adults.
