THE WORK OF HITO STEYERL

Hito Steyerl (born 1966 in Munich, Germany} is a filmmaker, visual artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary. She is currently a professor of New Media Art at the University of the Arts, Berlin, where she co-founded the Research Centre for Proxy Politics, together with Vera Tollmann and Boaz Levin. Steyerl has produced a variety of work as a filmmaker and author in the field of essayist documentary, filmography and post-colonial critique, both as a producer and theorist. Steyerl attended the Japan Institute of the Moving Image and University of Television and Film Munich. She participated in Manifesta 5 in 2004 and has exhibited widely in solo and group shows since this time; notably, at the Chisenhale Gallery, London 2010; E-flux, New York, 2012; Artists Space, New York 2015; KOW, Berlin, 2015; Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2015; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2016 and Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, 2016. Steyerl is widely published in periodicals, newspapers, journals and anthologies, as well as her own publications, including the critically acclaimed Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War in 2017.

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AI SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZED BY HITO STEYERL AT CASTELLO DI RIVOLI

December 12, 2018, 11 - 5pm

Castello di Rivoli launches a symposium on Artificial Intelligence with the participation of theorists, privacy and data management experts, consultants in the field of architecture and security development systems, chosen with artist Hito Steyerl. Titled The City of Broken Windows, Hito Steyerl’s new sound and video-based multimedia installation presented in the Manica Lunga at Castello di Rivoli, drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marianna Vecellio, stems from her research into Artificial Intelligence industry practices and surveillance technologies. Through this work, Steyerl explores how AI affects our urban environment and how alternative practices may emerge through pictorial acts in the public space.

The City of Broken Windows

October 31, 2018 - February 2019

Hito Steyerl focuses on the role of media, technology and the circulation of images in the era of digital nativism. The artist creates installations in which film production is associated with the construction of architectural environments. For her exhibition at Castello di Rivoli, she premieres The City of Broken Windows (2018), stemming from research into the practices of Artificial Intelligence industries, surveillance technologies and the contradictory roles Museums often play today. The City of Broken Windows revolves around neural sound recordings that, like an atonal and discordant symphony, document the process of teaching artificial intelligence how to recognize the sound of breaking windows, a practice that symbolizes social disruption. Steyerl explores how AI affects our urban environment and how alternative practices may emerge through pictorial acts in the public space. Chris Toepfer, protagonist of the new work, will board up Castello di Rivoli with trompe l’oeil window paintings. Steyerl’s new project offers an intriguing perspective on how the digital contemporary imagination shapes our emotions and experience of reality.

War Games ( Hito Steyerl and Martha Rosler)

May 5 - December 2, 2018

The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Present presents works by Martha Rosler (Brooklyn, NY) and Hito Steyerl (Berlin).She puts both early and current works into a dialogue conceived jointly with the artists. Rosler and Steyerl are exhibiting together for the first time - both are also the first comprehensive show in Switzerland. In addition to numerous video works, photos, photomontages, banners and objects, on two floors of the building you will see expansive multimedia installations that confront visitors with spectacularly staged high-tech imagery.

The works of both artists address the interfaces between politics and the mass media. Both in their artistic as well as theoretical production, Rosler and Steyerl reflect the connection between our perception of social reality and the audiovisual media that are essential for their mediation.

Germany is not an island (group show)

March 8 - May 27, 2018

"Germany is not an island" - this quote is not consciously assigned to anybody, but was and is used by different personalities in different contexts. It is clear, however, that the exhibition is intended to describe the multicultural location 'Germany', a place where everyone is welcome. And a place where all the arts can develop interdisciplinary. Art often seeks the confrontation with traditional perspectives and ideas and thus opens up spaces that also call for greater tolerance, openness and reflection. It needs no social consensus, no vote, but is first and foremost free. Politically, however, she is still, and socially-promoting power also resides in her, especially when she invokes her freedom and her obstinacy.

Hello World―For the Post-Human Age (group show)

February 10 - May 6, 2018

Art as radar acts as “an early alarm system,” as it were, enabling us to discover social and psychic targets in lots of time to prepare to cope with them.*1. These were the words of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, writing in Understanding Media with sharp insight in the 1960s and predicting the social revolution that new technology would bring. Half a century has now passed since McLuhan published his important work, and the Internet has permeated our society and new technological innovations like artificial intelligence are rapidly advancing. “Any technology tends to create a new human environment.”

Faithless Pictures ( Group Show)

February 9 - May 13, 2018

The complex relationship between image and reality has long been one of the most important topics in art.
In this exhibition, the National Museum shows works from the last four decades by close to forty prominent artists. Using a variety of approaches, they all address the surfeit of images we see all around us.
The visual deluge that supposedly represents our lives, our times, our world. News clips, holiday snaps, flickers from the depths of the internet. A fragmented intermediate world, half illusion, half reality. Excerpts and selections. And in the midst of it all: glimpses of truth. Images with the power to change the world.