Hito Steyerl | The City of Broken Windows

Hito Steyerl

The City of Broken Windows

Milan, Italy: Skira, 2019

205 pp., 29 x 24.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Published by Skira (who celebrate their centennial in four years), this illustrated catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition held at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli, from November of 2018, to June 30th the following year. 

"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, has boarded 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.

Screens, windows, liquid and non-liquid crystals all tie together in this first new installation since Hell Yeah We Fuck Die in 2016 looked at Robot performativity and precariousness.

Hito Steyerl’s celebration of the potential of critical thought in the digital era has influenced the work of numerous artists and activists worldwide. Amongst her most influential texts, she published In Defense of the Poor Image in e-flux online journal in 2009. Most recently, her writings have been collected in volumes such as The Wretched of the Screen (e-flux journal series, Sternberg Press, 2012) and Duty Free Art. Art In the Age of Planetary Civil War (Verso Press, London and New York, 2017) which includes Duty Free Art (published first in 2015) and A Tank on a Pedestal (2016).”

- press release

Hito Steyerl | Duty Free Art

Hito Steyerl

Duty Free Art

London, UK: Verso Books, 2017

256 pp.,  14.73 x 2.54 x 21.84 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

In Duty Free Art - written before Covid19 and George Floyd's murder - Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age.

Subtitled Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, the collection of essays asks other pertinent questions, too: 

How do we respond to the fact that the world’s most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global futures market? What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museum exhibitions? Are we able to distinguish between actual information and the constant digital white noise? Is agency still possible? How can art disrupt rather than reinforce? 

In Duty Free Art, Steyerl - perhaps the most engaging writer among visual artists - explores subjects as diverse as corporate surveillance, video games, WikiLeaks, the origins of spam, the proliferation of freeports, and military 3D imaging.

Like her public lectures, these texts are whip-smart, dense, barbed and witty. 

“Steyerl refuses to nail down a single idea or insist on a point of view. Instead, we get art—her video—as an act of moral thinking-in-progress. In a very of-the-moment, digital-age way, the logic of that thinking is fractured, the nature of morality suspect. But a belief in the necessity of thinking, restlessly, politically, never is in doubt.” 

—New York Times

“Steyerl’s art is extremely rich, dense and rewarding … With Steyerl, you can’t always tell fact from fabulation, where the jokes end and seriousness begins, what is truth and what is a lie. A pleasure in art can unhinge us in everyday life, where we are undone by falsehoods at every turn.” 

—Adrian Searle, Guardian 

Hito Steyerl | I Will Survive

Hito Steyerl

I Will Survive

Leipzig, Germany: Spector Books, 2020

448 pp., 20 x 28.5 cm, softcover

Edition size unknown

I had the privilege of exhibiting alongside Steyerl once, years ago at the Montreal Biennale. Early in the morning the day after the opening party (which went late) she appeared on a panel discussion, which I dragged myself out of bed for mostly because the curators were also speaking. Hito sat at the table with the others with her head in her hand, either frustrated or hung-over, or both. I was not expecting a good presentation when she rose to speak. But she instantly shook off her obvious fatigue and gave one of the most original and captivating artist talks I've ever seen. 

I tend to enjoy her theory more than I connect with her works. Her writing is consistently strong, and she has penned some texts that became instant classics (In Defense of the Poor Image, for example). Her reputation as one the leading theorists in contemporary art today is well-founded. 

This book was published in conjunction with Steyerl’s survey show at the Pompidou in Paris and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. The exhibition includes her early documentary works from the nineties and her architectural video installations of the last decade. 

The show is currently on display at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, running until June 6, 2022.

Artists4Bernie

As of today, more than 2500 artists, curators, critics,  musicians, writers, and arts professionals have formally endorsed Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders for president of the United States. Among them: Hito Steyerl, Jeff Koons, Damián Ortega, Kader Attia, Kara Walker, Kim Gordon, Martha Rosler, Nan Goldin, Anicka Y, Nicole Eisenman, Karen Azoulay, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Steve Reinke, Ryan McGinley, Parker Ito and Moyra Davey.

In addition to visual artists, the letter was signed by actress Chloë Sevigny, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and musicians Devendra Banhart, M.I.A, Kim Gordon, and Michael Stipe.

The letter quotes Sanders commitment to the arts: "You have my promise that as president, I will be an arts president. I will continue to advocate strongly for robust funding of the arts in our cities, schools and public spaces. Art is speech. Art is what life is about."Conversely, each of Trump's annual budgets have declared the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities as 'wasteful and unnecessary funding'.

The Artists4Bernie campaign was launched by DIS, Mohammed Salemy, and Jennifer Teets. See the signatures at the website, here:

https://artists4bernie.org

Hito Steyerl/Susumu Yokota/Kojey Radical | Power Plants

Hito Steyerl/Susumu Yokota/Kojey Radical
Power Plants
London, UK: The Vinyl Factory, 2019
12" vinyl record
Edition of 500

Hito Steyerl’s film installation Power Plants closes next week at The Serpentine Sackler Gallery*.  Co-commissioned with The Store X, it revolves around "anticipating the future in unpredictable ways, using Artificial Intelligence."

This two-song soundtrack EP on 180g vinyl features an ambient classic by late Japanese producer Susumu Yokota and a collaboration with UK artist and hip hop star Kojey Radical.

The images and sound within the film are generated via Artificial Intelligence, a specially-developed algorithm that warps and morphs the inputted data. Kojey Radical's lyrics have similarly been ran through an algorithmic reconfiguration.

The disc is available on clear vinyl, in an edition of 500 copies, fifty of which are signed by Steyerl and Kojey Radical. Visit The Vinyl Factory site, here, for details.


*Steyerl has subsequently argued that the gallery should be re-named, given the Sackler family's part in the opioid crisis: “Imagine you were married to a serial killer and wanted a divorce – it shouldn’t be a problem to get a divorce.”

Hito Steyerl | Gosprom

Hito Steyerl
Gosprom
Berlin, Germany: Self-published, 2015
70.0 x 70.0 cm
Edition of 35 signed and numbered copies

A silkscreen in seven colors, on Invercote G 380 g/m2 paper.

Yesterday the Akademie der Künste in Berlin named Steyerl as the winner of the 2019 Käthe Kollwitz Prize. The $13,600 prize recognizes international multimedia artists based in Germany and is accompanied by an exhibition and a publication. Previous recipients include Adrian Piper, Corinne Wasmuht, Douglas Gordon, and Mona Hatoum.

Roula Partheniou | Desk Set

Roula Partheniou
Desk Set
Toronto, Canada: Paul + Wendy Projects, 2014
3.75 x 5.5 x 1.25" (stacked)
Edition of 25 signed and numbered copies

A wooden eraser sits atop a wooden stack of post-it notes which sits atop a wooden notebook. The edition has sold out but a variation is currently being produced as part of the special edition of Partheniou's forthcoming monograph, Inventory (Black Dog Books, 2018).

Listen to Partheniou discuss objects and the replica (alongside Hito Steyerl and Helen Hester) in a podcast from the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, here.

Hito Steyerl Wins Inaugural EYE Prize

From Artforum:

"Hito Steyerl has won the first edition of the EYE Prize for artists working in film, reports Hannah Ghorashi at Artnews. The $37,100 prize was established by the EYE Film Institute Netherlands to support artists who work primarily in the medium of film. Steyerl will be presented with the award today in Amsterdam at the EYE Gala.

The 2015 EYE jury consisted of director and artist Chantal Akerman; MoMA’s chief curator for media and performance art, Stuart Comer; EYE CEO Sandra den Hamer; artist and director Isaac Julien; advisor, and art collector Martijn Sanders; producer and screenwriter Olivia Stewart; and screenwriter and director Béla Tarr.

A retrospective of Steyerl’s work is currently on view at Artists Space in New York and she will also be included in a group show at the German Pavilion for the 2015 Venice Biennale."