The Work of Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl, SocialSim, 2020. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2021. Still © Hito Steyerl

For our Spotlight this week we present Hito Steyerl's SocialSim, 2020.

SocialSim, 2020, is a site-specific video installation that premiered at K21 in Düsseldorf and now on view at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, through July 5.⁠⁠
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The installation includes an immersive projected live simulation—Dancing Mania in Düsseldorf and Rebellion in Paris—and a video presented in two adjacent darkened rooms divided by a wall, also used as a projection surface. In both rooms the floor is covered with reflective black vinyl that mirrors the projections.⁠⁠

Click here to see the full Spotlight!

Hito Steyerl, SocialSim, 2020. Exhibition view: Hito Steyerl: I Will Survive, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2021. Photo © Centre Pompidou, Bertrand Prévost, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2021

The Centre Pompidou presents, in collaboration with K21 in Düsseldorf, I Will Survive: the first large-scale exhibition dedicated to the work of Hito Steyerl in France.

Spreading out over the entire space of the Galerie 2 of the Centre Pompidou, the survey exhibition brings together a group of major works, articulated around SocialSim (2020), a new production that imagines the future of the world in the era of social simulation technologies. The retrospective retraces a path that began in the 1990s in the field of documentary cinema and that has been developing, for the past ten years, particularly inventive multimedia installations, dedicated to joyfully transforming the immersive character of our visual culture into a space for reflection. Pointing out the failures and paradoxes of the image, Hito Steyerl experiments with new ways of talking about reality and critically addresses nationalism, capitalism and artificial intelligence.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.

Hito Steyerl, SocialSim, 2020, single channel HD video and live computer simulation Dancing Mania, duration: 18:19 min (single channel), Dancing Mania duration variable

© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2020
Film still © Hito Steyerl

What happens to the art at the museum at night? 
A weird-ass visual podcast

During the corona-related shutdown in November 2020, Hito Steyerl’s exhibition I Will Survive at K21 (September 26, 2020—January 10, 2021) transforms into a livestream format. The project 4 Nights at the Museum developed by the artist, filmmaker, and author Hito Steyerl, provides some background and conversations about the works in the exhibition.

In five episodes (each lasting ca. 45 minutes), selected works and themes in I Will Survive will be discussed in more detail. Participants in the works, such as the New York-based graphic designer Ayham Ghraowi or the Hamburg-based actress Heja Netirk, will talk about their perspectives. In addition, Steyerl will present alternative versions of exhibited works and previously unedited archival material. Short guided tours by the curators will accompany visitors into the exhibition spaces, which are abandoned at night. They will take a look at some of the works and prove that there is nothing going on inside the museum during the shutdown. 

The episodes will livestream on e-flux Video & Film starting Sunday, November 15. All episodes air at 8pm CET, 2pm EST.

More information here

Hito Steyerl, SocialSim, 2020⁠. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2020⁠
Film still © Hito Steyerl⁠

Hito Steyerl's simulation Social Sim screening live from a locked down K21 to reflect the current political climate.⁠

Watch the live stream here!

Hito Steyerl, Robots Today, 2016, single channel HD video file, duration: 8:02 min
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019
Film still © Hito Steyerl

Helin Celik, Nathalie Borgers, Tina Leisch and Hito Steyerl, four unlike filmmakers, initiated the film series Women Rise up For Rojava and want raise awareness for solidarity with mult-ethnical, multi-ideological and feminist self-government structures in kurdish regions in Syria (Rojava) in order to strengthen the international collaboration of women for the peace building process in the Middle East.

More information can be found HERE

Hito Steyerl, In Free Fall, 2010 

© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019

Film still © Hito Steyerl

In Free Fall incorporates a trio of works: Before the Crash, After the Crash and Crash, which tell the story of the current global economic crisis through the example of an aeroplane junkyard in the Californian desert. The aeroplane junkyard reveals the anatomy of all sorts of crashes: both fictional and real. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle.

For more information click HERE.

Hito Steyerl, This is the Future, 2019, video installation, environment, single-channel HD video, color, sound, duration: 16 min, dimensions variable
Exhibition view: May You Live In Interesting Times, 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, 2019
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019
Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Online Presentation
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE
Stream of the lecture by Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl, and Miloš Trakilović
November 21, 2019, 7 pm
Stream at www.nbk.org

Panel Discussion
Image and Representation in the Work of Hito Steyerl
With Nora M. Alter (Professor of Film and Media Art, Temple University, Philadelphia) and Klaus Theweleit (Cultural theorist, Freiburg), moderated by Doreen Mende (Curator and theorist, Harun Farocki Institute, Berlin / University of Art and Design, Geneva)
In German and English
November 28, 2019, 7 pm

Hito Steyerl, who artistically and socially reflects our world in times of hypercapitalism, digital lifestyles, globalization, and growing political crises, is one of the most influential artists of our time. In 2009, she presented her first solo exhibition in a German institution at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.).

In 2019, which marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the institution, n.b.k. is again dedicating a solo exhibition to her work, presenting the video installation This is the Future (2019) together with the large-scale site-specific installation MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE. In cooperation with the artists Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze and Miloš Trakilović, Steyerl has developed a new lecture, in which her preoccupation with the conditions of capitalist production, consumer culture, and the mechanisms of commodification is continued.

Hito Steyerl, Hell Yeah We Fuck Die, 2016, video installation, environment. Hell Yeah We Fuck Die: Three-channel HD video file: 4:35 min. Robots Today: Single channel HD video file: 8:02 min.
Exhibition view: This is the Future, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2019
© Art Gallery of Ontario & VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019
Photo © Dean Tomlinson

Artist Talk
with Hito Steyerl
Wednesday October 23, 2019, 6:30 pm
Tickets

Hito Steyerl is an artist, theorist and acute observer of our contemporary world. This survey exhibition, the largest of its kind in Canada, brings together a significant number of her works from the last 15 years.

Steyerl's playful explorations of technology and power structures result in darkly ironic cultural critiques that feel particularly relevant today. She blends the personal with the political, the satirical with the serious, while addressing a range of topics from economic collapse to globalization. Steyerl draws us into her world, asking us to reflect on our own roles in shaping the not-so-distant future.

Hito Steyerl, Drill, 2019, 3 channel digital video (color, sound)
Film still © Hito Steyerl

Artist Talk: Drill

Hito Steyerl
Park Avenue Armory, New York 
June 20, 2019, 6 pm

This summer, Hito Steyerl reveals her most recent installation in the U.S. to date, commissioned by the Armory and curated by Park Avenue Armory’s visual arts curator Tom Eccles. ⠀

Steyerl utilizes both the Wade Thompson Drill Hall and historic interiors of the building in mounting both pre-existing works as well as new projects commissioned by the Armory in her ongoing illumination of the world’s power structures, inequalities, obscurities, and delights. When viewed collectively, this material allows the viewer to zoom in on and out from some of the most complex and pressing issues of our time.⠀

For more information and tickets click HERE. 

Left: © Liam Gillick; Right: © Trevor Paglen

e-flux journal presents: Art After Culture? cumulative conference in New York featuring Liam Gillick and Hito Steyerl.

For more information and tickets click HERE.

Hito Steyerl, Lovely Andrea, 2007, single channel video; sound in English, Japanese and German with English subtitles; color, duration: 30 mins
Film still © Hito Steyerl

Film Screening: Lovely Andrea (2007)
Bar Laika by e-flux, New York
Thursday June 13, 2019, 9 pm

Lovely Andrea follows the artist’s quest to find a bondage photograph she posed for while in Tokyo as a film student. The film explores ideas of bondage and domination as they extend to self-identification, popular culture, and politics.

Hito Steyerl, Leonardo’s Submarine, 2019, 3 channel HD video, color, sound, environment: 3 curved screens made of LED panels, dimensions variable, duration: 9:30 min
Exhibition view: May You Live In Interesting Times, 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2019
Photo © Andrea Rossetti

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tomás Saraceno and The Work of Hito Steyerl, are participating in the 58th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff.

Exhibition view: Power Plants, Serpentine Galleries, London, 2019. Serpentine Galleries AR application design by Ayham Ghraowi, developed by Ivaylo Getov, Luxloop⁣⠀
Photo © 2019 readsreads.info⁣⠀

Hito Steyerl’s new project for the Serpentine Galleries considers power and inequality in society, mapping unequal wealth distribution in the communities surrounding the Serpentine which has been recorded as one of the most socially uneven areas in Europe. Power Plants will see an augmented reality app designed to expand our social vision of some local communities to reveal what Steyerl calls Actual Reality, a series of guided neighbourhood ‘power walks’, and a new video installation created using artificial intelligence trained to predict the future. 

Beginning with the premise that "power’" is the necessary condition for any digital technology’, Steyerl considers the multiple meanings of the word, including electrical currents, the ecological powers of plants or natural elements, and the complex networks of authority that shape our environments.

Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013⁣, single channel high definition digital video and sound in architectural environment

Duration: 15:52 min

Film still © Hito Steyerl⁣

Hito Steyerl in conversation with Marius Babias⁣

Steyerl’s artistic discourse orbits sociopolitical processes in theory and practice: postcolonial criticism, abuse of power, violence and the influences of globalization and digital life visualized in five mixed media installations. ⁣
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This year’s Käthe Kollwitz Prize winner responds by assembling and disassembling computer generated and real images as well as self-written texts. An artist talk will be held together with Marius Babias on 9 Apr 2019.⁣
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The talk will be held in German and tickets can be purchased here.

Hito Steyerl, Liquidity Inc., 2014, HD video file, single channel in architectural environment, duration: 30 minutes, 15 seconds 

Exhibition view: Animal – Human – Robot, MO Museum, Vilnius, 2019

Photo © Kęstutis Stoškus

Animal – Human – Robot will explore explores the ever-changing relationship between humans and other beings: from animal species to organic and mechanical entities created by humans, such as genetically modified organisms or artificial intelligence. 

Read more about the exhibition here.

Photo © Trevor Paglen

We are delighted to announce the exhibition opening and award ceremony of Hito Steyerl for the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2019 at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Read more about the exhibition here.