Hito Steyerl
Hito Steyerl is a female German Filmmaker and actor/artist. Her work includes short films such as 'November' in 2004, 'In Free fall' in 2010, 'How Not to be Seen in 2013', and more.
She has also made several video installations, such as 'Power Plants' in 2019, 'Liquidity inc.' in 2014, and 'SocialSim' in 2021.
Montage and compilation of clips is a common aspect of her work.
She also created a series of essays, which have been compiled into a book called 'Wretched of the Screen'.
Background
Born in Munich, Germany in 1966. In childhood, she spent a lot of time with her brother at the research campus where their father worked. Steyerl later Dropped out of high school and got involved with a small anarchist group alongside Andrea Wolf. During this period, she repeatedly underwent surveillance by the police.
In 1987 she moved to Japan to Kanagawa, where she studied at the Japan Institute of the Moving Image. After finishing her degree, Steyerl worked as a Video Assistant to Wim Wenders on a film called “Until the End of the World.”
She Moved back to Munich In 1991 and enrolled in the University of Television and Film where she started to make her own individual films. Her friend was executed in Turkey in 1998, likely due to her collaboration with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and she made a tribute film in 2004.
November (2004)
The tribute film Stereyl made to her friend Andrea Wolf, which featured footage taken from a silent film they made together at the age of seventeen. The footage shows three girls in shirts and leather jackets fighting a group of guys.
Intercut with this footage we see other media such as Kung-fu fight scenes, news reports of Andrea Wolf managing workers in iraq, suggestive pinups, and videos of a German political protest.
In Free Fall (2010)
This video is presented as a documentary, consisting of interviews with a young Israeli and a dealer at a Californian airplane graveyard.
The film explores the cycle, circulation, and physicality of objects through topics such as the relation between airplane lifecycles and the aluminum trade, the fragility of DVDs as a commodity, and a hijacking by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1976.
How Not to be Seen (2013)
The 15 minute piece explores themes of surveillance and ways of becoming invisible from the systems of digital observation and data collection that has become so prevalent in our lives.
SocialSim (2021)
The name was a mistake as she was using a neural network trying to get it to say Socialism but got SocialSim instead. The installation is described as a room covered in black vinyl with a song instrumental playing a familiar tun. Different videos are projected onto opposite walls.
On the other side of the wall runs a narrow gallery lined with blue exercise balls. The visitor bobs up and down as they watches a lecture called “The Benefits of Automation for the Actor/Actress"
Power Plants (2019)
A multi-screen piece showing images of flowers made by a neural network, a computer program modeled on the human brain. By using an AR app called Actual Reality OS, the user sees statistical data relating to workers rights, social housing and austerity overlaid on the surroundings. By default, the data is encrypted, but can be translated using a digital key.
They used a mixture of the app and ipads hung from the ceiling to annotate the generated plants on the video screens, providing new names. quotes and human testimony. The set also had a soundtrack made in collaboration, with rapper, Kojey Radical.
Liquidity Inc. (2014)
A 30 minute video featuring images and representations of capitalism. The video frames these themes in the form of liquid and splashing water, alluding to business terms such as "liquidating assets" and "flooding the market". The viewer is also shown stories of a former investment banker Jacob Wood.
- In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective
Explores the psychology of existing in a physical space, how we interpret our location in relation to our surroundings. The essay also goes into detail about the use of perspective in art. - In Defense of the Poor Image
Discusses the value of images which are blurry or low quality, and goes into why our quest to produce images that are as high resolution as possible is damaging. - A Thing Like You and Me
Talks about how we identify ourselves, and our relationship with things and objects. The essay uses digital images as an example. Could we become a thing or an image, and what would the point of this be? - Is a Museum a Factory?
Analyses museums as places of production for new cultural artifacts. Steyerl discusses the similarities between museums and factories, from how they restrict outside viewership, to their relationship with political cinema, installations, etc. - The Articulation of Protest
Discuses the many elements that comprise how we articulate our thoughts and feelings to those in power, mainly through the medium of political protests. Steyerl addresses this subject through the examination of several films in how they transmit their political mentalities. - Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-Democracy
Examines the function of contemporary art in the post cold war era, at a time where the world was undergoing massive societal changes. Introduces the concept of strike workers, an excess workforce that existed in the soviet union, and how it evolved into a modern day art world built upon free labour and people who refuse to fit into any class. Steyerl describes politics and art as interwoven at practically every level. - Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life
In this essay, Steyerl focuses on how art operates in the traditional context of professional employment. She compares art that is created in a job setting for the purpose of making a livelihood and earning their salary/wage, to art created by individuals who create for personal motivations that are not monetary. By doing this, the essay explores the ways this changes how art is created and operates. - Freedom from Everything: Freelancers and Mercenaries
Addresses the people who deliver services outside the common networks of jobs, rather those who operate independently from the two previously mentioned parties of people who either create art for corporations or for personal interest. One particular area Steyerl focuses on is the freelancing world, where people are not tied to any particular organisation. The essay also examines the cultural context of freedom and its historical implications. - Missing People: Entanglement, Superposition, and Exhumation as Sites of Indeterminacy
Discusses the Schrödinger's cat dilemma and how it applies to people. Throughout the essay, Steyer ponders several questions about the permanence of human beings, the difference between life and death, and where a person's body goes once they have died. In the context of the essay, she also discusses the ambiguous fate of Andrea Wolf's body after her execution in 1998. - The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation
Analyses the obscene amount of images created by our society and used in media. Steyerl begins by looking at the types of messages these images convey and how they do the opposite of their intended purpose to represent us, instead displaying everything what we are not and presenting an ideal that many are unable to reach. She goes onto discuss the ways people fight against these systems by refusing to be represented and deciding to remain unknown. - Cut! Reproduction and Recombination
This essay examines many meanings of a cut, whether that be the cinematic context of connecting and transitioning between shots, or the physical context of cutting fat through dieting and cutting off body parts through amputation. She discusses cuts in an economic and metaphorical sense, delving into concepts such as the body natural and the body politic. Steyerl goes onto discuss the role of the cut in postproduction, as well as its relationship with production and reproduction.
Bibliography
BUTTROSE, E. (2015). 'Seeking resolution: hito steyerl: too much world.' Art Monthly Australia. [Online] (277) pp.58-59. Available from: https://www.proquest.com/docview/1656246071/fulltextPDF/A6D80F8970B547FDPQ/1?accountid=14660 [Accessed 23rd February 2023]
GALERIE RUDOLFINUM (2021). Compassion Fatigue is over | intro | Hito Steyerl | November & lovely Andrea. [Online Video]. July 27th. YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y-Lo3Ri6_U. [Accessed: 23th February 2023].
ARTSY (n.d.). Hito Steyerl: November (2004). [Online] Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/hito-steyerl-november [Accessed: 26 February 2023]
EMRE, M. (2022). Hito Steyerl's Digital Visions, The New Yorker. [Online] Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/hito-steyerls-digital-visions [Accessed: 22 February 2023]
LEKELLY99 (2017). How not to be seen: A fucking didactic educational .mov file. [Online Video]. Sep 14th. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE3RlrVEyuo. [Accessed: 23rd February 2023].
PICTURE THIS (2010). In Free Fall, Picture This . [Online Video]. October 10th. Available from: http://www.picture-this.org.uk/worksprojects/works/by-date/2010/in-free-fall. [Accessed 27th February 2023].
RING, A. (2021). 'The politics of ‘primary rejection’ in herman melville's bartleby and hito steyerl's how not to be seen: racism, (il)legibility, surveillance, and determinate negation.' German Life and Letters, [Online] 74 (1) pp.67–89. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/glal.12292 [Accessed 23rd February 2023]
ROURKE, D. (2013). Falling into the digital divide: Encounters with the work of Hito Steyerl, Daniel Rourke. [Online] Available at: https://machinemachine.net/portfolio/falling-into-the-digital-divide-encounters-with-the-work-of-hito-steyerl/ [Accessed: 27 February 2023]
SCHIPPER, E. (2021). Spotlight: Hito Steyerl. [Online] Available at: https://mailings.artlogic.net/readonline/ae36ceff34b44733a8eb98092fc3aa5e [Accessed: 24 February 2023]
SERPENTINE GALLERIES (2022). Hito Steyerl: Power plants. [Online] Available at: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/hito-steyerl-power-plants/ [Accessed: 22 February 2023].
STEVENS, R. (2015). ‘Hito steyerl.’ Millennium Film Journal. [Online] (62) pp.17-19. Available from: https://www.proquest.com/docview/1785465022/fulltextPDF/A4303E7D1A2E4A23PQ/1?accountid=14660 [Accessed 23rd February 2023]
STEYERL, H. (2013). The wretched of the screen. [Online] Sternberg Press. Available from: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781934105825/ [Accessed 23rd February 2023]
TELEAESTHETICS DOT NET (2018). Hito Steyerl, "liquidity" 2014 at ghost 2561. [Online Video]. November 17th. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfzumRvuXuo. [Accessed: 24th February 2023].
Comments
Post a Comment