HITO STEYERL
ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall - London
4/3/2014 - 27/4/2014
Berlin-based artist and writer Hito Steyerl is one of the most critically acclaimed artists working in the field of video today. Steyerl’s work focuses on contemporary issues such as feminism and militarisation, as well as the mass proliferation and dissemination of images and knowledge brought on by digital technologies.
This exhibition offers a selected survey of Steyerl’s work. Presented here are five videos, each installed in a distinct manner. The first film encountered is titled Liquidity Inc. (2014). This new work looks at a financial advisor called Jacob Wood who lost his job during the last financial crisis, and who then embarked on a career in mixed martial arts. How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) mocks an instructional film on the idea of becoming invisible in the digital world. Finally, her video Guards (2012) deals with museum officers with a background as law enforcement officers or military personnel. Two recorded lecture performances - I Dreamed a Dream and Is the Museum a Battlefield - filmed live in 2013 at the 13th Istanbul Biennial and Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin respectively are presented here in the exhibition.
'Steyerl’s films and essays take the digital image as a point of departure for entering a world in which a politics of dazzle manifests as collective desire. This is to say that when war, genocide, capital flows, digital detritus, and class warfare always take place partially within images, we are no longer dealing with the virtual but with a confusing and possibly alien concreteness that we are only beginning to understand. Today the image world, Steyerl reminds us, is far from flat. And paradoxically it may be in its most trashy and hollowed out spots that we can locate its ethics. Because this is where forms run free and the altogether unseen and unrecognised toy with political projects at the speed of light. It is where spectacle and poverty merge, then split, then dance.' - Brian Kuan Wood
Supported by The Hito Steyerl Exhibition Supporters Group
Image: How Not To Be Seen. A Fucking Didactic Educational .Mov File, Hito Steyerl, 2013, HD video file, single screen, 14min
ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall - London
4/3/2014 - 27/4/2014
Berlin-based artist and writer Hito Steyerl is one of the most critically acclaimed artists working in the field of video today. Steyerl’s work focuses on contemporary issues such as feminism and militarisation, as well as the mass proliferation and dissemination of images and knowledge brought on by digital technologies.
This exhibition offers a selected survey of Steyerl’s work. Presented here are five videos, each installed in a distinct manner. The first film encountered is titled Liquidity Inc. (2014). This new work looks at a financial advisor called Jacob Wood who lost his job during the last financial crisis, and who then embarked on a career in mixed martial arts. How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) mocks an instructional film on the idea of becoming invisible in the digital world. Finally, her video Guards (2012) deals with museum officers with a background as law enforcement officers or military personnel. Two recorded lecture performances - I Dreamed a Dream and Is the Museum a Battlefield - filmed live in 2013 at the 13th Istanbul Biennial and Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin respectively are presented here in the exhibition.
'Steyerl’s films and essays take the digital image as a point of departure for entering a world in which a politics of dazzle manifests as collective desire. This is to say that when war, genocide, capital flows, digital detritus, and class warfare always take place partially within images, we are no longer dealing with the virtual but with a confusing and possibly alien concreteness that we are only beginning to understand. Today the image world, Steyerl reminds us, is far from flat. And paradoxically it may be in its most trashy and hollowed out spots that we can locate its ethics. Because this is where forms run free and the altogether unseen and unrecognised toy with political projects at the speed of light. It is where spectacle and poverty merge, then split, then dance.' - Brian Kuan Wood
Supported by The Hito Steyerl Exhibition Supporters Group
Image: How Not To Be Seen. A Fucking Didactic Educational .Mov File, Hito Steyerl, 2013, HD video file, single screen, 14min
