Hito Steyerl: In Free Fall

Hito Steyerl
In Free Fall
29 July – 19 September 2010

22-28 Cockburn Street
Edinburgh, Scotland
EH1 1NY
www.collectivegallery.net

“Falling is a transition. It is a movement from one position to another. In as much as it suggests failure or ruin, to love is also to fall. It is corruption, revolution and abandonment. It implies a relationship. Hito Steyerl’s In Free Fall charts a singular object, the Boeing 707-700 4X-JYI airplane, in this process of falling. Less the story of an object’s production and eventual obsolescence, In Free Fall documents a life made visible through consecutive moments of destruction.”
— Gil Leung

In Free Fall incorporates a trio of works: Before the Crash, After the Crash and Crash, which tell the story of the current global economic crisis through the example of an aeroplane junkyard in the Californian desert. The aeroplane junkyard reveals the anatomy of all sorts of crashes: both fictional and real. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle. An example of this is the Boeing 4X-JYI, first acquired by film director Howard Hughes for TWA, which then flew for the Israeli Airforce before it was blown up for the Hollywood blockbuster, Speed. But the economic crisis doesn’t stop short of affecting the film industry either.

Through intertwined narratives of people, planes and places Steyerl reveals cycles of capitalism incorporating and adapting to the changing status of the commodity, but also points at a horizon beyond this endless repetition.

Hito Steyerl, artist and filmmaker, Berlin.

This represents Steyerl’s first solo exhibition in Scotland.
Crash, the culmination of In Free Fall is a new work co-comissioned by Collective, Edinburgh, Chisenhale Gallery, London and Picture This, Bristol.

Also showing: Staged by Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth
Collective offsite at City Observatory, Calton Hill

“The City Observatory, on the summit of Calton Hill in Edinburgh, soars above the city and sits beneath the heavens. It is a perfect location to survey the urban population and to scan the stars. With Staged, Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth bring those possibilities into conjunction, drawing on the long scientific history of the observatory while devising an installation that mixes live and pre-recorded footage from CCTV cameras around the city.”
— Francis McKee

Symposium: How to inform without informing
30.7.10

Speakers: Hito Steyerl, Kim Coleman, Jenny Hogarth, Alfredo Cramerotti, Francis McKee, Lisa Panting, Ian White.