Hito Steyerl
5 March–27 April 2014
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall
London, SW1Y 5AH
T +44 (0) 20 7930 3647
www.ica.org.uk
Twitter / Facebook
Berlin-based artist and writer Hito Steyerl is one of the most critically acclaimed artists working in the field of video today. Steyerl’s work focuses on contemporary issues such as feminism and militarisation, as well as the mass proliferation and dissemination of images and knowledge brought on by digital technologies.
This exhibition offers a selected survey of Steyerl’s work. Presented here are five videos, each installed in a distinct manner. The first film encountered is titled Liquidity Inc. (2014). This new work looks at a financial advisor called Jacob Wood who lost his job during the last financial crisis, and who then embarked on a career in mixed martial arts. How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) mocks an instructional film on the idea of becoming invisible in the digital world. Finally, her video Guards (2012) deals with museum officers with a background as law enforcement officers or military personnel. Two recorded lecture performances—I Dreamed a Dream and Is the Museum a Battlefield—filmed live in 2013 at the 13th Istanbul Biennial and Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin respectively are presented here in the exhibition.
“Steyerl’s films and essays take the digital image as a point of departure for entering a world in which a politics of dazzle manifests as collective desire. This is to say that when war, genocide, capital flows, digital detritus, and class warfare always take place partially within images, we are no longer dealing with the virtual but with a confusing and possibly alien concreteness that we are only beginning to understand. Today the image world, Steyerl reminds us, is far from flat. And paradoxically it may be in its most trashy and hollowed out spots that we can locate its ethics. Because this is where forms run free and the altogether unseen and unrecognized toy with political projects at the speed of light. It is where spectacle and poverty merge, then split, then dance.”
–Brian Kuan Wood
Supported by The Hito Steyerl Exhibition Supporters Group
Public Programme supported by Goethe Institut
Also on view
Richard Hamilton at the ICA
12 February–6 April
Lower & Upper Galleries
ICA Off-Site: Dover Street Market
10 February–6 April
Jane Drew (1911–1996): An Introduction
12 February–22 March
Fox Reading Room
Paperwork: A Brief History of Artists’ Scrapbooks
1 April–11 May
Fox Reading Room
Associated talks and events:
Screening of films by Hito Steyerl + introduction by Nina Power
Wedesday 5 March, 6:30pm
Hito Steyerl and Peter Osborne in conversation
Friday 21 March, 6:30pm
Lunch Bytes: Medium: Format
Saturday 22 March, 2pm
In Parallel
“Graham Harman: Objects and the Arts”
Friday 14 March, 6:45pm
Hamilton: A Film by Liam Gillick
Wednesday 26 March, 6:45pm
Culture Now
Thomas Bayrle – 7 March
Simon Denny & Aleksandra Domanović – 21 March
Abraham Cruzvillegas – 28 March
Gallery tours of Richard Hamilton at the ICA:
Lucy Rose Bayley – 13 March
Robin Kinross – 20 March
James Capper – 3 April
Artists’ Film Club: 21st Century Pop – 6 March
Friday Salons:
Curating the Archive – 7 March
Colonial Modernity (and its Crises) – 14 March
Colour Clash – 4 April
Academic symposia:
Dwoskin Day – 8 March
“Just what is it that makes today’s art schools so different, so appealing?” – 29 March
“An Introduction to Radical Thinkers”
21 January–18 March
ICA Student Forum:
“Man, Machine & Motion” – 25 March
“Consumerist Paradise: Glamorous and Big Business” – 1 April
ICA artists’ editions
Hito Steyerl is producing an edition to accompany the exhibition.
Visit our artists’ editions at www.ica.org.uk/shop/editions.
For information, contact: vicky.steer [at] ica.org.uk / T +44 (0) 20 7766 1425
Press information:
Naomi Crowther, Press Officer ICA
naomi.crowther [at] ica.org.uk / T +44 (0) 20 7766 1407
