The Work of Hito Steyerl

Still: Hito Steyerl, Animal Spirits, 2022, single channel HD video and live computer simulation, duration: 24 min, simulation duration variable. © the artist
히토 슈타이얼, 야성적충동, 2022, 싱글 채널 HD 비디오 및 라이브 컴퓨터 시물레이션, 재생 시간: 24 분, 재생 시간 가변. © the artist

Hito Steyerl
A Sea of ​​Data
MMCA | National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
30 Samcheong-ro 5-gil
Jongno-gu, Seoul
April 29 – September 18, 2022
www.mmca.go.kr


Hito Steyerl, A Sea of Data at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia, sharing 23 of her most representative works from her early film essays with a documentary quality such as Germany and Identity (1994) and The Empty Centre (1998), to her most recent video installations reflecting on digital technology. The exhibition will premier Animal Spirits (2022), a new work commissioned by MMCA.

The exhibition title A Sea of Data comes from Steyerl’s essay “A Sea of Data: Apophenia and Pattern (Mis‒)Recognition”, 2016 (read here), alluding to the ever-growing abundance of digital images and data that the current society and industries produce. The exhibited works critically assess the production of information and images, big-data and algorithms that run through social media, internet, surveillance and cyber-politics. 

The New Yorker
Hito Steyerl’s Digital Visions
By Merve Erme
Read the full article here

'It would be wrong to claim that I first met the German artist Hito Steyerl on such-and-such day, insuch-and-such city, where the weather was bright or blustery, and that she arrived suitably dressed for this season or the next. It is more accurate to say that she simply appeared while I was waiting in the atrium of the Communist Party court, under a spectacular red banner from which the faces of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin bore down on me. One minute I was alone, and the next she was there—all yellow and smooth, except for the thick black cubes of her hands and her large, impassive face. Four black cats trailed her, in place of her shadow. “I spawned a lot of them, so they have multiplied,” she murmured. Suddenly, a kitten wobbled out from between her legs. “I made a baby!” she cried. When I tried to balance a puffer fish on my own blocky hand to feed thekitten, I pressed the wrong button, and kicked it instead.

Kicking kittens is, I believe, usually discouraged, but in Minecraft, the sandbox video game in which players extract raw materials—water, wood, sugarcane, coal ore, gold, lapis lazuli—and use them to craft three-dimensional Legolands, the stakes of violence seem lower. The game is “a very good metaphor for how platforms really work,” Steyerl told me. Platforms seduce their users into performing the unpaid work of content creation—uploading the texts, photographs, videos, and music that are the raw material of the digital world—while mining their metadata to create newmarkets for corporate and military surveillance. “Many of the other platforms are quite devious,” she said. “We don’t really know whether your face is being used to train facial-recognition algorithms or something like that.” In the digital economy, free labor tenders a self-replenishing vein of gold for capital’s pickaxe.'

– Merve Erme for The New Yorker, February 2022

Exhibition views: Hito Steyerl. I Will Survive, 2022, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2022. Photo © Peter Tijhuis

The major solo exhibition Hito Steyerl. I Will Survive opens at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on January 29, 2022. An artist, cultural critic, filmmaker, writer and professor, Hito Steyerl (1966) is one of the most significant and influential figures in contemporary art. She operates on the boundary between film and visual art, working in genres ranging from documentary cinema to innovative multimedia installations. Her rigorously researched and visually stunning installations illuminate some of the most pressing issues of our time. 

Hito Steyerl is a master storyteller, utilizing image, sound, essays, performance and architectural environments to shape her narratives. Her recent works develop an entire, completely immersive installation for each video. Steyerl’s Factory of the Sun (2015), which debuted at the 2015 Venice Biennale, takes place in a sci-fi matrix dotted with beach chairs. The video Liquidity Inc. (2014) which addresses global migration and financial inequality, is viewed from a blue wave-like seating area. The exhibition poses untold narratives, connecting disparate threads that Steyerl masterfully unravels, shifting between reality and dream worlds that are unfortunately all too real.

Internationally, Steyerl is considered one of today’s most influential and politically engaged artists. She uses her position as an artist to expose patterns of control. As well as critiquing strains of capitalism, nationalism, ethnic profiling, digital control, power structures, media and politics in an era of globalization, she also addresses the status of art production, museums and biennials. Steyerl relentlessly asks: Who holds power? Who is abused by that power? Her work is jarring, always deeply affecting, and compels us to think about our own role in the stories she tells. 

I Will Survive offers an expansive overview of Hito Steyerl's oeuvre, from the early documentary works of the 1990s to architectural video installations of the past 10 years. The exhibition presents 20 loaned works and two installations that the Stedelijk acquired in 2014 in collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum.

Hito Steyerl, This is the Future, 2019, video installation, environment.
Exhibition view, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: BELANCIEGE, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl, and Miloš Trakilović, n.b.k., Berlin, 2019. Photo © n.b.k. / Jens Ziehe

Post Nature: Dear Nature, the inaugural exhibition of the Ulsan Art Museum, evokes a complex sense of history and cultural politics, rather than an ecology that mankind can change. The exhibition will not only raise the awareness of nature in danger but reset our ecological sensitivity beyond the previous dichotomous perspective of human and non-human, providing a multilayered opportunity to reset ecological sensibility, and think about “what it is to live in solidarity."

Ulsan Art Museum opens as the first major art museum in the eighth-largest city in South Korea. The museum will specialize in digital media art, encompassing the fast-evolving digital art genre.

개관특별전 <포스트 네이처: 친애하는 자연에게>는 인류가 바꾸어 놓을 수 있는 생태가 아닌 역사와 문화 정치가 얽힌 복잡한 감각을 떠올린다. 이를 통해 경각심을 일깨우기보다 인간과 인간이 아닌 것을 나누던 이분법적 사고에서 벗어나 생태적 감수성을 다시 설정하고 “함께 연대하며 살아가는 것이 무엇인지” 생각할 수 있는 다층적 계기를 제공한다.

울산 시립 미술관은 대한민국에서 8번째로 큰 도시에 처음 세워진 대형 미술관이다. 빠르게 발전하는 디지털 아트 장르에 부합하며 디지털 미디어아트 중심 미술관으로서의 정체성을 정립한다.

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.

Photo © Kristian Schuller

For its December newsletter, titled "The Challenge: We are in this together", The New Institute asked Esther Schipper – among other thinkers and practitioners – to share her insights and analysis on the current global pandemic. For the occasion, Esther Schipper selected artworks by the gallery artists showing that the questions of viruses and pandemics have been among us for a long time.

Click here to read!

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.