Architects, contrary to most artists, work by definition from the core of society. Rem Koolhaas is one of the few architects who demonstrates the ability to do so while maintaining a critical distance. Does his strategy contain a hint for artists on how to create significant art in a world where everything seems bound for insignificance?

Writer Edzard Mik visited the CCTV building in Beijing, designed by Rem Koolhaas's OMA, and wrote a lyrical 'road essay' about Koolhaas, Beijing and on being an artist in the 21st century. 

'Image overload, significance deficit, suspension of identity and nonstop transformation and adaptation: it is not only the condition of travel but also the condition into which modernity has delivered us.'

About the author: Edzard Mik (1960) is a Dutch novelist and a regularly featured essayist on visual art, architecture and theater in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and weekly magazine Vrij Nederland.

 This is the fifth publication in a series of essays commissioned by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.