DOCSLIB.ORG

Bodies Withdrawn: the Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post-Minimal Art

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Bodies Withdrawn: the Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post-Minimal Art Bodies Withdrawn: The Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post-Minimal Art by Edward Bacal A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History of Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Edward Bacal 2018 Bodies Withdrawn: The Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post- Minimal Art Edward Bacal Doctor of Philosophy Department of History of Art University of Toronto 2018 Abstract This dissertation examines the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Doris Salcedo, Teresa Margolles, and Santiago Sierra, artists that redeploy the aesthetics of 1960s minimalism in relation to contemporary political crises. I argue that these artists make an important case for the political and ethical relevance of aesthetic abstraction, insofar as their work imagines forms of co- existence that resist the sovereign organization of human bodies. In each chapter, I discuss a selection of major works by an individual artist, emphasizing theoretical analyses that privilege deconstruction, bio- and necropolitical theory, and continental philosophy. I situate artistic practices in relation to their social and political contexts to consider how Gonzalez-Torres, Salcedo, Margolles, and Sierra respond to issues such as the AIDS crisis, state violence, and socio-economic subjugation. Specifically, I consider how they use minimalist formal strategies to convey the socio-political abstraction of human life and, further, to address the conditions in which certain bodies fail to appear. These artists demonstrate how the body’s disappearance produces an abstraction: not the sign of a body but the index of its withdrawal from appearance (to invoke the etymological meaning of abstrahere). By portraying the material traces of the figure’s negation, they account for the aesthetic and political challenge of presenting anonymous bodies and beings. Their work thereby inverts minimalism’s concern with the relation of objective forms to embodied viewers, in that it reveals art’s contradictory relation to inaccessible bodies. This approach carries important aesthetico-ethical ramifications: it exposes !ii viewers to unknowable and imperceptible beings, challenging dominant ethical models based on the inter-subjective relation of autonomous individuals; hence, it illustrates an ethics of co- existence that is irreducible to subject-object binaries and to the subjectivization of embodied life. !iii Acknowledgments If this dissertation has taught me anything, it’s that any work of creation is really the work of everyone else. One simply renders the traces of one’s diffuse encounters with countless others and with the world at large. So, to count but few of those countless others… First and foremost, I am grateful to my family for the unconditional love and personal, moral, and material support they have always provided me, allowing me to pursue my aspirations while trusting me with the freedom to do so. I thank my parents for making all of this possible and to Michael and Natalie for their invaluable friendship. I feel very fortunate to have worked with my committee, which has been consistently supportive, open-minded, patient, and amicable. I only regret being too shy to develop stronger relations with them. It has been a real privilege to have John Paul Ricco as my supervisor. I continue to marvel at his scholarly ingenuity, which I take as a model and an inspiration for what one can do in art writing. All of our interactions have been meaningful for me and I hope this is the beginning of a more infinite conversation of sorts. Likewise, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to have worked with Elizabeth Legge and Eva-Lynn Jagoe, whose expertise, humour, and encouragement have augmented this project and made writing it much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. I am grateful to everyone that has discussed my research, assisted me, or reached out to me (to be sure, there are more names I can list or remember and many unknown names I cannot). I extend my sincere thanks to Jordan Bear, an exemplar of academic generosity; to the friends I’ve made through this PhD, including but not limited to Arielle, Jackson, Gary, Marina, Emily, and Jerome (thank you for both erudite discussion and critical girl-talk); to everyone I’ve worked with in the Graduate Union of Students of Art (to name just one, Samantha Chang’s efficiency and organization will never cease to amaze me); to the art department staff for their administrative support and answering of persistent requests; to the organizers of conferences and workshops I’ve participated in; to Susan Morrison, Fiona Allen, Gemma Angel and Caroline Fournet, and Yasmin Nurming-Por, for extending publication opportunities; to Emilie Kedlie and Andrew Blackley, respectively of and formerly-of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, for !iv their interest, generosity, and support (it is heartening to think about how a shared passion for FGT’s work so often generates varied, unexpected, and meaningful interactions. This fact undergirds the existence of this dissertation and, in my opinion, totally legitimates Gonzalez- Torres’ artistic project); to Santiago Sierra and Luis Navarro for their time, communication, and resources; to Rebecca Comay, first, for sharing her insights into Doris Salcedo and, second, for serving as my internal examiner; to Philip Armstrong, for his contribution as external examiner; to James Cahill for generously discussing a separate project that, in turn, informed this one; to Jean-Philippe Uzel and Emmanuel Licha, for including me in their “Topographies of Mass Violence” study group; to Karl, Tim, and Schuyler of U of T’s Centre for Ethics, for including me in their Graduate Associate group; to those involved in the many other extracurricular programs and opportunities I have been able to benefit from during my degree; and to everyone on campus that has supported my role as a university student and employee and has pushed for equity at U of T. I want to acknowledge that much of my academic success is built on a Jackman Humanities Institute fellowship I undertook as an undergraduate in 2010-2011, where the seeds of this project began to stir. I hope to continue building on that momentum and to extend that kind of support I received to others. Finally, a very special “thanks!” goes to Susan Morrison, whose particularly decisive influence as a teacher, interlocutor, journal editor, and friend has motivated me to study art and theory to the extent that I have. I am more than grateful to take that influence into the rest of my career and life. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Additionally, I received support from the following sources: the Department of Visual Studies’ Graduate Expansion Fund, a Pekka K. Sinervo scholarship, various conference and travel grants from my home department, and a conference grant from the School of Graduate Studies. !v Table of Contents Acknowledgements !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! iv Table of Contents !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!vi List of Figures !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!viii Introduction: Towards an Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post-Minimal Art !!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Why Minimalism? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Abstraction: Aesthetics, Politics, Ethics !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Background to the Project !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!10 Felix Gonzalez-Torres !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!14 Doris Salcedo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Teresa Margolles !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Santiago Sierra !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 1. Somebody Other than this, Nobody Other than this: Felix Gonzalez-Torres' and the Undoing of Subject-Object Relations !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Stacks and Piles: Debts to, and Departures from, Minimalism !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Undoing Subjects: Positions and Bodies !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Undoing Portraits !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 Undoing Names and Bodies !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 Bodies Against AIDS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Monica Bonvicini Unrequited Love
    GALLERIA RAFFAELLA CORTESE PRESS RELEASE Monica Bonvicini Unrequited Love Opening reception September 19, 7pm – 9pm September 20 – November 23, 2019 | Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 1pm / 3pm – 7:30pm and by appointment Galleria Raffaella Cortese is pleased to present Unrequited Love, the second show by Monica Bonvicini, which develops across the gallery’s exhibition spaces in via Stradella as if it were three solo exhibitions. For years, the artist has been carrying out photographic documentation of family houses in Lombardy that were designed and built towards the end of the 1960s for the ‘traditional’ family of the time. The current appearance of these buildings, once rigorously identical in all their parts, reflects the economic and demographic changes of their communities in the past fifty years, resulting in discordant and incompatible aesthetics that create unusual and curious juxtapositions. Three of the houses that make up the photographic series Italian Homes (2019) cover the walls of the space in Via Stradella 1; the series will be shown in its entirety on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni in Turin this fall. Placed on top of this wallpaper, three large scale works on paper from 2002, Places of ID (Three People at the...), Pin Up Girl, and Vitruvius, offer intriguing relationships between architecture, history, and sexuality. From the wall to the right, a cast bronze hand emerges at an unusual height; Grab Them by the Balls #2 (2019) suggests a clear answer, not without humor, to the patriarchal power that diminishes female reality. The underground space at number 7, left completely dark, is illuminated by the suspended sculpture Bent on Going (2019), an array of LED light tubes connected by an intricate weave of electric cables.
    [Show full text]
  • The MIT Press Spring 2021 Dear Friends and Readers, Contents
    The MIT Press Spring 2021 Dear Friends and Readers, Contents Books are carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows to the world, “lighthouses” (as a poet said) Trade 1-32 “erected in the sea of time.” Paperback Reprints 33-36 —Barbara W. Tuchman, American historian Distributed by the MIT Press University presses are critical to the academy’s core purpose to create and share knowledge. In these extraordinary times, scholars and scientists are racing to overcome a pandemic, Boston Review 37 combat climate change, and protect civil liberties even as Goldsmiths Press 38-39 they are forced to engage in escalating information warfare. With expanding misinformation and shrinking public trust in Semiotext(e) 40-43 news media, in science and academia, and in expertise more Sternberg Press 44-58 broadly, it falls to universities and mission-driven publishers to uphold sense-making and the spreading of facts—to share Strange Attractor Press 59-61 and translate credible, research-based information in ways that Terra Nova Press 62 maximize its impact on decisions that will shape the future of humanity. University presses have a central role to play in this Urbanomic 63 cause, and the MIT Press continues to be a guiding light. As Director, I am reminded daily of the power of books for posi- Academic Trade 64-68 tive change—to create more beauty, knowing, understanding, Professional 69-91 justice, and human connection in our vast and complex world. www.dianalevine.com Amy Brand All of us at the MIT Press feel a profound responsibility to use Journals 92-94 our privileged perch for good wherever we can.
    [Show full text]
  • Hito Steyerl
    In Defense of the Poor Image Hito Steyerl The poor image is a copy in motion. Its Poor images are the contemporary quality is bad, its resolution substandard. Wretched of the Screen, the debris of As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost audiovisual production, the trash that wash- of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an es up on the digital economies’ shores. errant idea, an itinerant image distributed They testify to the violent dislocation, trans- for free, squeezed through slow digital ferrals, and displacement of images – their connections, compressed, reproduced, acceleration and circulation within the ripped, remixed, as well as copied and vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism. pasted into other channels of distribution. Poor images are dragged around the globe as commodities or their effigies, as gifts The poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or or as bounty. They spread pleasure or death a JPEG, a lumpen proletarian in the class threats, conspiracy theories or bootlegs, society of appearances, ranked and valued resistance or stultification. Poor images according to its resolution. The poor image show the rare, the obvious, and the unbe- has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, lievable – that is, if we can still manage reformatted, and re-edited. It transforms to decipher it. quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contempla- tion into distraction. The image is liberated 1 from the vaults of cinemas and archives and Low Resolutions thrust into digital uncertainty, at the ex- pense of its own substance. The poor image In one of Woody Allen’s films the main tends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea character is out of focus.1 It’s not a techni- in its very becoming.
    [Show full text]
  • Hito Steyerl I Will Survive 26. 9. 2020— 10
    Raumplan Floor Plan Hito Steyerl I Will Survive 26. 9. 2020— 10. 1. 2021 Begleitheft zur Ausstellung Cover: Hito Steyerl, This is the Future, 2019, videoinstallation (single channel HD video, color, sound), environment, 16 minutes sound), environment, color, 2019, videoinstallation (single channel HD video, This is the Future, Steyerl, Hito Cover: Exhibition Guide Courtesy the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York und Esther Schipper, Berlin © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Steyerl 2020. Film still © Hito Berlin © VG und Esther Schipper, York Courtesy New the artist, Gallery, Kreps Andrew Die Ausstellung wird gefördert durch Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation Medienpartner Media partner Ständehausstraße 1 Gefördert durch Supported by 40217 Düsseldorf kunstsammlung.de Einführung Introduction 2 01 Strike 6 02 Deutschland und das Ich 7 03 Babenhausen 8 04 Normalität 1 – X 9 05 Die leere Mitte 12 06 November 12 13 13 07 Lovely Andrea 13 08 11 12 08 Guards 15 14 02 05 09 15 03 06 10 09 This is the Future / Power Plants 16 04 07 10 Mission Accomplished: Belanciege 18 01 09 11 Is the Museum a Battlefield? 19 16 17 12 Duty-Free Art 21 16 13 SocialSim 22 14 Hell Yeah We Fuck Die 23 15 The City of Broken Windows 25 16 How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking 27 Didactic Educational .MOVfile 17 In Free Fall 28 Biografie Biography 30 Hito Steyerl I Will Survive 26. 9. 2020— 10. 1. 2021 Begleitheft zur Ausstellung Exhibition Guide Hito Steyerl. I Will Survive Hito Steyerl. I Will Survive Die Künstlerin, Filmemacherin und Autorin Hito Steyerl (*1966) gehört
    [Show full text]
  • FACING FORWARD Art & Theory from a Future Perspective
    This spirited exploration of the interfaces between art and theory in the 21st century brings together a range F of viewpoints on their future. Drawn from across the A fields of art history, architecture, philosophy, and media C FACING studies, the authors examine contemporary visual culture based on speculative predictions and creative scientific I arguments. Focusing on seven themes — N Future Tech G Future Image Future Museum Future City Future Freedom Future History & Future Future — the book shows how our sense of the future is shaped by a pervasive visual rhetoric of acceleration, progression, excess, and destruction. Contributors include: Hans Belting Manuel Delando Amelia Jones Rem Koolhaas China Miéville Hito Steyerl David Summers F O R W FORWARD A R ART & THEORY D FROM A FUTURE PERSPECTIVE AUP.nl 9789089647993 EDITED BY HENDRIK FOLKERTS / CHRISTOPH LINDNER / MARGRIET SCHAVEMAKER FACING FORWARD Art & Theory from a Future Perspective Edited by Hendrik Folkerts / Christoph Lindner / Margriet Schavemaker AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS COLOPHON This book is published in print and online Amsterdam University Press English- through the online OAPEN library (www. language titles are distributed in the US oapen.org). OAPEN (Open Access Publish- and Canada by the University of Chicago ing in European Networks) is a collabora- Press. tive initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic resAearch by aggre- gating peer reviewed Open Access publica- tions from across Europe. PARTNERS ISBN Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 978 90 8964 799 3 University of Amsterdam E-ISBN Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam 978 90 4852 623 9 (SMBA) NUR De Appel arts centre 670 W139 Metropolis M COVER DESIGN AND LAYOUT Studio Felix Salut and Stefano Faoro Creative Commons License CC BY NC (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/3.0) All authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam, 2015 Some rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • I WANT to SEE HOW YOU SEE JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION April 16 – July 25, 2010 (Deichtorhallen Hamburg)
    I WANT TO SEE HOW YOU SEE JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION April 16 – July 25, 2010 (Deichtorhallen Hamburg) The exhibition at the Hamburg’ Deichtorhallen will be the first extensive presentation of the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION shown in the context of a museum worldwide. The exhibition, which will commence April 16, 2010, will feature 65 works by 54 artists from this very young private collection in a space extending of over 3,000 square meters. The main focus of the presentation will be on film and video works produced in the last 40 years, a time range which applies to the entire Julia Stoschek Collection. Classics of video art, such as Marina Abramović’s Art must be beautiful/ Artist must be beautiful dating from 1975-76, Vito Acconci’s Openings (1970) and Chris Burden’s Shoot (1971 are conjoined with more recent works of younger artists, giving viewers the opportunity to relate to the history of the still rather young genre of video art. The majority of the works were actually produced after 2000. They range from lyrical pieces such as Heike Baranowsky’s Mondfahrt and complex animation films such as Björk’s Wanderlust in 3D up to elaborate spatial installations by artists such as Monica Bonvicini, Anthony McCall, and Nathalie Djurberg. The video works are accompanied by sculptures (e.g., by Nandipha Mntambo), photographic works (e.g., by Thomas Demand, Taryn Simon, Thomas Ruff) and installations (e.g., by Jeppe Hein). The title of the exhibition I Want To See How You See was derived from the work in the show by Pipilotti Rist (2003) of the same name.
    [Show full text]
  • Hito Steyerl (B. 1966), Factory of the Sun, 2015. High-Definition Video, Color, Sound; 22:56 Min., Looped; with Environment, Dimensions Variable
    Hito Steyerl (b. 1966), Factory of the Sun, 2015. High-definition video, color, sound; 22:56 min., looped; with environment, dimensions variable. Installation view: Invisible Adversaries, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 2016. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Marieluise Hessel Collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. Photograph by Sarah Wilmer Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016 is sponsored by Audi. Major support is provided by the Dalio Foundation, The Rosenkranz Foundation and the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Significant support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. Generous support is provided by Alexandre and Lori Chemla, George and Mariana Kaufman, the Orentreich Family Foundation, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by Susan and Matthew Blank. Audi of America, Inc. and its U.S. dealers offer a full line of German-engineered luxury vehicles. AUDI AG is among the most successful luxury automotive brands globally. The Audi Group delivered over 1,800,000 vehicles to customers globally in 2015, and broke all-time company sales records for the 6th straight year in the U.S. Through 2019, AUDI AG plans to invest about 24 billion euros - 70 percent of the investment will flow into the development of new models and technologies. As a champion of innovative art, Audi is proud to sponsor Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
    [Show full text]
  • Hallucinating Networks and Secret Museums Hito Steyerl on Our Aesthetic Immiseration
    Hallucinating Networks and Secret Museums Hito Steyerl on Our Aesthetic Immiseration Ryan Anthony Hatch BOOK REVIEWED: Hito Steyerl, Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War. New York: Verso, 2017. f Art Review magazine’s “Power 100” rankings are to be heeded, Hito Steyerl is the most important person in the art world.1 Seeing Steyerl’s name occupy Ithe widely hyped list’s top spot, I was reminded that in what we call “the art world,” we are always confronted with at least two different notions of power, perhaps as inextricable as they are incommensurable. For whatever power the German artist and writer can be said to possess has everything to do with her peerlessly trenchant critical investigations of another kind of power subtending and shaping contemporary art—the sort of power whose abuse comes as no sur- prise, in so far as its exercise is coterminous with its abuse. Steyerl’s work maps the power of . well, the actually powerful, those who stand to profit from art’s metamorphosis into an “alternative currency” that screens out the horrors and launders the spoils of war, and on whose behalf contemporary media technologies are now being weaponized as so many apparatuses of surveillance and control. She is best known for immersive video installations like How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013), Liquidity Inc. (2014), and her celebrated contribution to the 2015 Venice Biennale German Pavilion, Factory of the Sun (2015). In such densely narrative works, documentary fact and political analysis give way to flights of speculative fiction, perfectly reasonable paranoia, and hyperbolic zaniness, in an effort to render the extent of our subjugation and exploitation in the globalized neoliberal world order, as well as the critical roles aesthetic experience plays in this order’s operation.
    [Show full text]
  • Art, a Test Site Hito Steyerl in Conversation with João Fernandes
    Vol. VII comparative cinema Hito Steyerl in No. 12 2019 conversation with João Fernandes 106-123 Art, a Test Site Venice, May 2015. Hito Steyerl has just premiered her latest piece, Factory of the Sun, in the German pavilion at the Biennale. We meet at the San Basilio vaporetto stop, opposite the Molino Stucky on the Giudecca. Many times between two places, between the working Venice of the nineteenth century and the channel providing passage to the cruise ships that threaten the history and memory of the ancient city, its campi and narrow winding streets. It’s the perfect condensation of the conflict between the current economy of value accumulation and the value accumulated by a whole memory; the history of the struggles for identity and the dignity of the human condition were also the subject of representation in the past, as the Venetian painters show us. From there we go to the house where Hito and her team have been living while they installed the new piece. We start a conversation to contextualize the presentation of her work in the exhibition we are preparing at the Reina Sofía Museum. It’s a brief and incisive exchange, like her texts and images, which engage with rare critical lucidity images of our time, responding to their rapidity by stopping them, making a brief pause to think in the flow of the film, aware that “light travels so fast that the image is produced before the event”. In the work of Hito Steyerl (Munich, 1966), the construction of the text and the editing of the image expand the condition of the film essay, reflecting on and intervening in the systems of circulation of information and of the presentation and representation of the work of art.
    [Show full text]
  • Hlto Steyerl
    HltO Steyerl HITO STEYERL, FACTORY OF THE SUN, 2015, HD video, 21 min. / SONNENFABRIK, HD-Video. (ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE ARTISTAND ANDREWKREPS GALLERY, NEW YORK) Hito Steyerl Hito Steyerl HITO STEYERL, LIQUIDITY INC., 2014, HD video, 30 min. / particularly in NOVEMBER (2004), LOVELY ANDREA t 2 m+àJt~Z TFfÉ CUOC-V LIQUIDITÄT INC., HD-Video. (2007), and JOURNAL NO. 1 (2007), in which the f ^ r rft Æ Ï contemplation of a martyred friend, the search for a dimly remembered photo of the artist herself, and interviews about an old Yugoslavian newsreel lost in v*ü that country’s dissolution, respectively, supply the SOFTWARE through-lines to each piece. Lastly, Farocki and Stey­ erl’s films are frequently compared to those of three erl share an interest in exploring the political dimen­ exemplary elder filmmakers: Harun Farocki, Jean- sion of the production and distribution of images, Luc Godard, and Chris Marker. This heroic male trio with Farocki stressing the former half of this process, has been invoked innumerable times by harried jour­ and Steyerl, increasingly, the latter. nalists and pedigree-obsessed academics alike when a Focusing on the Farocki-Steyerl relationship and quick gloss is required. enhancing its details is instructive, illuminating not Even if this tripartite genealogy largely functions only the similarities between the two, but, more im­ On exposed hills, the as a form of praise, implying that a torch has been portantly, Steyerl’s divergence from older models passed from one generation to the next, significant Weather Underground lines can be traced from Steyerl’s work back to these will host corporate three figures.
    [Show full text]
  • Harun Farocki Hito Steyerl
    Cahier #2 A Magical Imitation of Reality Harun Farocki Hito Steyerl Digital books ready for download, realized in col- laboration with ground- breaking artists or theo- rists who want to overtake the limits of traditional publishing, Kaleidoscope’s e-books are the digital-era adaptation of our love for printed matter. Kaleidoscope’s Cahiers are a series of essays and conversations taking the form of e-books which seek to unfold the poten- tial of critique. H S Hito Steyerl H F Harun Farocki H S Harun, you once stated that “the only way to dis- tinguish a documentary film director from any other kind of director—of feature films, for instance—is that the feature film director can buy a private swim- ming pool, and the documentary maker cannot.” H F Though Michael Moore has most likely got one, if not several. In Turkey recently, a woman told me she sat on a board for the regulation of commercial broad- casters. They show too many commercials or fre- quently violate the code by showing women with plunging necklines or couples kissing. Instead of imposing the usual fines, it was mooted that they might be forced to screen documentary films. Doc- umentaries as a punishment! I immediately wanted to offer mine as the highest penalty available. Commercial channels don’t like anything with the label “documentary film.” But the documentary style is by no means alien to them. All those typical TV formats—game, chat, and reality TV shows— are cheaper to produce than the cheapest feature film. And there must be something that appeals to the viewers in all of this—a taste for reality.
    [Show full text]
  • After the Crash-The Ground and the Sublime in the Works of Hito Steyerl and Trevor Paglen
    Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2017 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2017 After The Crash-The Ground and the Sublime in the Works of Hito Steyerl and Trevor Paglen Niall Gabriel Murphy Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Murphy, Niall Gabriel, "After The Crash-The Ground and the Sublime in the Works of Hito Steyerl and Trevor Paglen" (2017). Senior Projects Spring 2017. 192. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017/192 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. After the Crash: The Ground and the Sublime in the works of Hito Steyerl and Trevor Paglen Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College Senior Project Advisor: Alex Kitnick by Niall Murphy Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2017 Dedicated to my friends at Bard, who give me the love, comfort and support I need to pursue my academic career. Acknowledgements Thank you to Susan Merriam, Tom Wolf, Dave McKenzie, Ed Halter, Katherine Boivin and Diana Depardo-Minsky, each of whom challenged me to think critically about art and allowed me to foster my own, individual approach to the subject.
    [Show full text]