Art & Technology #31: Hito Steyerl
A View Penetrating Images and Reality
Facing the contemporary via contemporary art
There would be hardly anyone in new media art who has not been influenced by the German artist Hito Steyerl. To that extent, her masterly theories and works covering net art or post-internet art penetrate the vast scope of a concept called “digital technology.” Rather than regarding an image as mere visual information, the artist interprets images by relating them to influences arising from the base of the capitalism, changes in political situations, or technological conditions such as digital technology. Hito Steyerl has been active in various areas other than art. In the 2013 interview with Japanese art media <Art It>, she said: “After a while it became clear that many of those people who couldn't work in the way they wanted in their own professions somehow all ended up working in the art field.
[…] I met dancers and architects and other filmmakers and people from all sorts of other professions - writers, philosophers, poets - who somehow ended up convening within the sphere of contemporary art. […] One of the most interesting aspects [of art], I think, is that it manages to bring together so many people working in different fields, and also across wide geographical distances.” As her remark shows, she is an artist who quickly captures and sharply analyzes recent movements in the art scene, while facing and speaking out about the contemporary, a concept that is fluid and hard to grab.
Steyerl’s Visual grammar
Jean Baudrillards declared, in his 2004 book <Le Pacte de lucidité ou l’intelligence du Mal>: “The adventure of modern art is over. Contemporary art is contemporary only with itself.” What he indicated was the only reality for contemporary art is that it is operating in real time while experiencing confusion with such reality. He also strongly claimed that it has no major difference that distinguishes itself from technical, promotional, media, or digital operation. His anti-aesthetics, or an aesthetic of denial, that accuses contemporary art in an extreme manner by calling it only a component involved in the comprehensive reality merely as the image-feedback, suggests more than just invalid cynicism.
The image-feedback Baudrillards criticizes, however, is a major element of visual grammar applied in Steyerl’s works, as she uses images deriving from reality to induce viewers to capture her artistic notion, instead of presenting unconventional techniques or following conventional rules of art. Images have been infiltrated in our lives for a very long time and appear in Steyerl’s screen as a flesh form, occupying human body. Images are not only considered an object to simply be watched, read, and controlled; they are raised to an independent movement that circulates and evolves, allowing people to participate. This is why Steyerl says, “Images do not represent reality, they create reality, they are second nature.” She even comes forward as a defender of countless “poor images” wandering around the world.
To criticism against poor images in low quality and at below-average resolutions being compressed, transmitted, and wandering in repeated copy-and-pastes, Steyerl defends: “The poor image is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation.” Saying she is not interested in images reflecting or representing reality, the artist especially focuses on what reinstated images do and what results they bring, along with interaction between images as an object and as a situation.
Art vividly demonstrating the uncertainty of the society
In 2014, in her work <Liquidity, Inc.> shown at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Styerl claimed that contemporary art became a certain concept that represented the global community, stating that, just as major real estate businesses rearranged urban places, and ultimately changed cities, contemporary art was also defined as the expansion of space and lack of responsibility. Seeing artworks having become financial assets and the rise and fall of art markets where publicity and private wealth collides, one might be reminded of gradually vanishing public base and space. Her three-channel video of 38 minutes and 21 seconds was given a title that indicates an incorporation of liquidity or cashability.
The work depicts the fall after the post-war rapid economic growth in the form of a fable where different issues are mixed including martial arts, climate system, high-frequency trading, labor, information, and market liquidity. Social elements such as system or control are no longer solid, while the speed of change is too fast for individuals to follow. Steyerl does not separate these global uncertainties from art. Instead, she uses an allegorical language to show how the most destructive images of our time can be realized as art. The artist likens art museums to battlefields or factories and cheerfully takes in the fact the technological environment applied with new media is not free from the mechanism of control.
Just like using a writing technique that includes many references when talking about a subject, Steyerl draws in seemingly irrelevant scenes in a single work. Entering the exhibition space and suddenly facing her videos, viewers usually are not able to figure out the correct starting and end points. Some sit patiently to enjoy the whole work, while most of them watch only parts of the scenes and leave. Because of this, <Liquidity, Inc.> could be remembered as a work that directly criticizes the the Lehman Brothers collapse, or could merely leave the voice of Bruce Lee, giving advice to people like a guru.
Importance of text
-
Steyerl voices her views both in her artworks and texts. In the 2014 interview with Polish quarterly art magazine <SZUM>, she said: “I was always writing. For a long time I supported myself as a writer, a journalist. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I try to make sure that my articles are never illustrations of my video works. Another reason is my training as a visual artist. I was taught that the image should never be an illustration of a text, so I think in a similar way about my writing – it should never be an illustration of my images either.
-
There should be a tension between them.” Sometimes, with a certain interval, the artist experiments on agendas she brought up with visual languages and characters. In this way, Steyerl is leaving an impression as an artist covering omnidirectional genres who fights against conflicts, contradiction, tensions, and downfall arising from neoliberalism. No one knows how her works will be appreciated in the future beyond the contemporary time. Her history, however, of boldly discussing about images in the foremost line of the time seems to have already saved her a chapter in the art history. ■with ARTINPOST
-
Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, 2015
Single channel high definition video, environment, luminescent LE grid, beach chairs, 23 minutes, Installation view from the Venice Biennale, German Pavilion, 2015, Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, Photography by Manuel Reinartz
-
Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, 2015
Single channel high definition video, environment, luminescent LE grid, beach chairs, 23 minutes, Image CC 4.0 Hito Steyerl, Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
-
Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, 2015
Single channel high definition video, environment, luminescent LE grid, beach chairs, 23 minutes, Image CC 4.0 Hito Steyerl, Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
-
Hito Steyerl, Liquidity Inc., 2014
HD video, single channel in architectural environment, 30 minutes, Installation view from Artists Space, New York, 2015, Photography by Matthew Septimus, Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
-
Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013
HD video, single screen in architectural environment, 15 minutes 52 seconds, Installation view from Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, 2014, Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
-
Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013
HD video, single screen in architectural environment, 15 minutes 52 seconds, Image CC 4.0 Hito Steyerl, Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
-
Hito Steyerl, How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, 2013
HD video, single screen in architectural environment, 15 minutes 52 seconds, Image CC 4.0 Hito Steyerl, Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
-
Duty-Free Art, November 11th, 2015 - March 21st, 2016
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Profile
Hito Steyerl was born in Munich, Germany, in 1966. She studied film and philosophy in Japan and Germany, and later received a doctor’s degree in Philosophy at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria. She is a visual artist who mostly works with videos and also a journalist who publishes interesting articles about media, technology, and images. She participated in world-famous art fairs including the Venice Biennale, the Berlin Biennale, the São Paulo Art Biennial, and documenta, travelling across the world to expand the scope of activity with Berlin as her base. She currently teaches new media art at the Berlin University of the Arts.
