Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl (born 1966 in Munich) is a German filmmaker, visual artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary.^[1] Her principal topics of interest are media, technology, and the global circulation of images. Steyerl holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.^[1] She is currently a professor of New Media Art at the Berlin University of the Arts.^[1]

Life and career

Steyerl was born in 1966 in Munich.^[2] Steyerl attended the Japan Institute of the Moving Image.^[3] She later studied at the University of Television and Film Munich.^[4] Steyerl has noted that studying film during the rise of New German Cinema had an effect on her as a student.^[4] However, she has cited her former professor, the noted film historian Helmut Färber, as having a more direct influence on her work.^[3]

In 2004 she participated in Manifesta 5, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art.^[5] She has also participated in the 2008 Shanghai Biennale^[6] and the 2010 Gwangju and Taipei biennials. In 2007, her film Lovely Andrea was exhibited as a part of documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany.^[7] In 2013 her work was included in the Venice Biennale^[8] and the Istanbul Biennial.^[9]

Hito Steyerl’s work blurs the line between cinema and the fine arts and closes the gaps between theory and practice, artist and cultural critic. Her work concerns topics of militarization, migration, the role of media in globalization, and the dissemination of images and the culture surrounding. Steyerl has pushed both the role and the label of fine artist, demonstrated through her tendencies and interests in engaging the presentational context of art. Her work is developed from research, interviews, and the collection of found images, culminating in pedagogically oriented work that references both forensic documentary and dream-like montage.

Solo exhibitions

Steyerl has had numerous solo exhibitions, including:

• Hito Steyerl, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2010)^[10]
• Hito Steyerl, E-flux, New York (2012)^[11]
• Hito Steyerl, Art Institute of Chicago, (2012) ^[12]
• Hito Steyerl, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2014)^[13]
• Hito Steyerl, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2014) ^[14]
• En defensa de la imagen pobre ("In defense of the poor image") and Arte, control y dominación. 3 películas de Hito Steyerl ("Art, control and domination. 3 films of Hito Steyerl"), MUNTREF as part of the Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento (BIM) (2014)^[15][16]
• Hito Steyerl, How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational Installation, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2014)^[17]
• Hito Steyerl, Artists Space, New York (2015) ^[18]
• Hito Steyerl, Left To Our Own Devices, KOW, Berlin (2015)^[19]
• Hito Steyerl, Duty-Free Art , Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2015)^[20]
• Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016) ^[21]
• Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, Hartware MedienKunstVerein in the Dortmunder U, Dortmund, Germany (2016)

Group exhibitions

Steyerl has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including:

• Dispersion, Institute of Contemporary Arts (2008)^[8]
• International Film Festival Rotterdam (2010)^[8]
• The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany (2011)^[8]
• No one lives here, Royal College of Art (2013)^[8]
• Bad Thoughts, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014)^[8]
• A screaming comes across the sky, LABoral, Gijón, Spain (2015)^[8]
• MashUp: the Birth of Modern Culture, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2015)^[22]

Awards

In 2010 Steyerl was awarded with the NEW:VISION Award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival for her film In Free Fall.^[23] In 2015 Steyerl won the inaugural EYE Prize, a collaboration between EYE Film Institute Netherlands and the Paddy & Joan Leigh Fermor Arts Fund. The aim of the award is to support and promote an artist or filmmaker who have made outstanding contributions to their field.^[24]

Select writings

Steyerl is a frequent contributor to online art journals such as E-flux. She has also written:

• http://www.e-flux.com/journal/a-thing-like-you-and-me/
• Steyerl, Hito. The Wretched of the Screen. Sternberg Press: 2013. ISBN 978-1-934105-82-5.
• http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

References

Bibliography

External links

• Hito Steyerl | Politics of Post-Representation, In conversation with Marvin Jordan, DIS Magazine