Hito Steyerl, I will Survive Physical and Virtual Spaces @ Centre Pompidou

Hito Steyerl, Hell Yeah, We Fuck Die, 2016

After months without museums and galleries, I am now overwhelmed with choice for exhibitions to visit. After sitting in my apartment since last October, I am being reminded of why I live in Paris—and it's not because my apartment is anything special. Despite booking a ticket for the Women and Abstraction exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, this afternoon I ended up in the Hito Steyerl "retrospective in reverse," as the museum calls it. Other than the fact that the most recent works are shown at the beginning of the walk through and Steyerl's 1990s German films are at the end, there's nothing particularly radical about the decision to move from the present to the past. 

Hido Steyerl, How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational.MOV File, 2013

Steyerl is one of the art world's most celebrated contemporary artists. Her high impact videos are politically outspoken and raise issues that get people talking. In addition, her work is often about making visible the invisible contradictions driving the power structures of global capitalism. The odd piece included in group shows at the Jeu de Paume aside, Steyerl's work is rarely shown in Paris. My suspicion is that this might be because it's very much in the tradition of German documentary film of the 1980s in particular. Especially the early essayistic work which might not have so much appeal to a French audience. Reasons aside, it was a treat to see the exhibition which has come from K21 in Düsseldorf.

 

Hito Steyerl, Liquidity Inc., 2016

Steyerl's best work creates connections where we least expect them. Liquidity Inc., for example, is a video that follows a man who is made redundant from his job in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The man takes up martial arts. You would think there couldn't be two activities more different, but Steyerl connects them through water! The liquidity and unpredictability of the financial markets are likened to the need to be flexible, always on one's toes, prepared to react, and to re-establish equilibrium following an opponent's surprise attack move. As viewers, we sit in rubber rings on a raked floor, already on our life boats as the man in the video attempts to get back on his feet. The video floats through a stream of references, images from the media, pop art, high art from different cultures such as Hiroshige's famous waves. Images from the media, GIFs, memes, hashtags, documentary films flow into each other suggesting the liquidity of everything around us. Before the screen, judo mats and pieces of broken raft are littered. They are the only concrete material objects in the piece.

Hito Steyerl, In Free Fall, 2010

In another video, In Free Fall, 2010, Steyerl films an ex-airline pilot who talks about making movies using mangled airplane bodies that he locates in a desert graveyard for airplanes. What's so perverse about the practices of recycling is that after the metal is no longer needed for the movies, it is recycled to make DVDs. Ironically, they too are now objects that are all but obsolete, like the airplane wreckage. A young Israeli man tells the story of crashing 707s as it is reported in the Israeli press. They considered the crash a success: the statistics are manipulated to make the government look good. The fact that the only thing left lying beside an airplane carcass are all the dead bodies that have fallen from the sky is nowhere mentioned by the Israeli press. No one survives an airplane crash. But the body of the airplane can be recycled without a problem. The young Israeli man and Steyerl herself perform the airline stewards saying their familiar safety routine. It is shown as the performance it is with lines such as the reminder to put your mask over your own mouth first being accompanied by images of the plane exploding into fire. Such is the show put on to make us all feel good within capitalist consumerism. Again, the force of the video comes in its juxtaposition of unlikely faces and voices, images and texts.

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Hito Steyerl, The City of Broken Windows, 2018

Another fascinating work The City of Broken Windows sees two facing video installations at either end of a long hall-like space. On the one end, sound engineers smash windows and record sounds for clients to download onto their devices (presumably as an app). Armed with these sounds, the wealthy home owners will be alerted and know if someone breaks into their house. It's a violent, if precisely carried out process, in which destruction is enacted in the name of technological advance. The engineers are more interested in the replication of the sounds than they are in reflecting on the aggression of their method of smashing sledge hammers into glass panels. At the other end of the corridor, The City of Unbroken Windows shows a second video documenting a diametrically opposed practice . Members of a community organization in New Jersey paint the boards that have been used to replace broken windows. One of the men was an army officer charged with dropping bombs during the Iraq war. And here he is decorating once vandalized windows as a way to stop violence through beautification. This half of the installation is about real people, addressing the problems that have come with capitalism, urban crime and vandalism. The other one shows the implications of technology, at a remove from the violence needed to advance it.

Hito Steyerl, Guards, 2012

Ultimately, the exhibition is a compelling walk through of Steyerl's practice. It is particularly rewarding if viewers sit in patience to watch and wait for the revelations that reveal themselves over time. The videos are satisfying because they are easy to understand, even if we do find ourselves laughing in horror at the secrets behind how our power structures operate.