HitoSteyerl Catalogue

8/6/2019 HitoSteyerl Catalogue

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In Free FallHito Steyerl

29 July 31 AugustMon Sun, 11am 6pm

1 Sept 19 SeptTue Sun, 11am 5pm

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Hito Steyerls lms are a

montage o pop and politics,

Hollywood and independent

lm, interviews and voice-

over commentaries; all

combined into provocative

lmic analyses o the present.

In free fallincorporates a

series o works:After the

Crash, Before the Crash and

Crash which tell the story

o the current global

economic crisis through

the example o an aeroplane

junkyard in the Caliornian

desert. The aeroplane

junkyard reveals the anatomy

o all sorts o crashes: bothctional and real. This is an

investigation o planes as

they are parked during the

economic downturn, stored

and recycled, revealing

unexpected connections

between economy, violence

and spectacle. An example

o this is the Boeing 4X-JYI,

rst acquired by lm director

In Free Fall

Hito Steyerl

Howard Hughes or TWA,

which then few or the

Israeli Airorce beore it was

blown up or the Hollywood

blockbuster, Speed. But the

economic crisis doesn't

stop short o aecting

the lm industry.

Through intertwined

narratives o people,

planes and places Steyerl

reveals cycles o capitalism

incorporating and adapting

to the changing status o the

commodity, but also points

at a horizon beyond this

endless repetition.

This represents Steyerls rst

solo exhibition in Scotland.

The exhibition also eatures

a previous work by Steyerl,

Journal No.1.

Hito Steyerl is an internationally

acclaimed artist and

theoretician based in Berlin.

Crash, the culmination

o In free fall, is a new work

co-commissioned by

Collective, Chisenhale

Gallery, London and

Picture This, Bristol.

Preview 29 July, 7 9pm

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Related Events

Staged

Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth

30 July 15 August

City Observatory, Calton Hill,

Edinburgh, EH7 5AA

Mon Sunday 11am 6pm

Preview 30 July, 6-8pm

Staged by Kim Coleman

and Jenny Hogarth is a multi-

channel video installation

combining live video with

pre-recorded ootage. Staged

is an o-site project in the City

Observatory on Edinburghs

Calton Hill.

Symposium:

How to inform

without informing

City Observatory,

Calton Hill

30 July, 4 6pm

Admission ree but booking

required. To book: email

[email protected]

To celebrate the launch

o two new commissions,

Collective has devised a

symposium with exhibiting

artists Hito Steyerl, Kim

Coleman & Jenny Hogarthand other speakers including

theorist Alredo Cramerotti

(author o Aesthetic

Journalism), Francis McKee

(curator and writer) and

Lisa Panting (Director o

Picture This, Bristol), chaired

by Ian White (LUX, London).

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In Defence of the Poor ImageBy Hito Steyerl

The poor image is a copy in motion. Its

quality is bad. Its resolution substandard.

As it accelerates, its resolution deteriorates.

It is a ghost o an image, a preview, a

thumbnail, an errant idea. An itinerant

image distributed or ree, squeezed through

slow digital connections, compressed,

reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as

copied and pasted into other channels

o distribution.

The poor image is a rag or a rip; an avi or

jpeg, a lumpen proletarian within the class

society o appearances. The poor image is

uploaded, downloaded, shared, reormatted

and re-edited. It transorms quality into

accessibility, exhibition value into cult

value, lms into clips, contemplation into

distraction. The image is liberated rom the

vaults o cinemas and archives into digital

uncertainty. The price is its substance. Ittends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea

in-becoming.

The poor image is an illicit th generation

bastard o a properly authorised image.

Its genealogy is dubious. Its lenames end

up being deliberately misspelt. It oten

dees patrimony, national culture or indeed

copyright. It is passed on as a lure, a decoy,

an index, or as a reminder o its ormer

visual sel. One even doubts whether it could

be called an image at all.

Poor images are the contemporary Wretched

o the Screen (in the sense in which Fanon

spoke o the Wretched o the Earth), the

debris o audiovisual production, the

trash washed up on the shores o digital

economies. They testiy to the violent

dislocation, transer, displacement o images,

their acceleration and circulation within

the vicious cycles o audiovisual capitalism.

Poor images are dragged around the globe

as commodities or their egies, as gits or

as bounty. They spread pleasure or death

threats, conspiracy theory or bootlegged

pixels, resistance or stultication. Poor

images show the rare, the obvious and the

unbelievable i we still manage to see it.

1.

In a Woody Allen lm the main character

is out o ocus. Its not a technical problem

but some sort o disease that beell him: his

image is consistently blurred. Since Allens

character is an actor, this becomes a major

problem: he is unable to nd work. His lack

o denition turns into a material problem.

Focus is identied as a class position, a

position o ease and privilege, while being outo ocus lowers ones own value as an image.

The contemporary hierarchy o images is not

only based on sharpness though, but mainly

on resolution. Just look at any TV hardware

store and this system becomes immediately

apparent. In a noteable interview in 20071,

Harun Farocki described this system: in

the class society o images, cinema takes on

the role o a fagship store. Flagship stores

market high-end products in an upscale

environment. More aordable derivatives

o the same images circulate as DVDs,

television images or online, as poor images.

1Wer Gemlde wirklich sehen will, geht ja

schlielich auch ins Museum. Frankurter

Allgemeine Zeitung 14.06.2007. Conversation

between Harun Farocki and Alexander Horwath.

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Obviously, a highly resolved image looks

more brillant and surprising, more mimetic

and magic, more scary and seductive as

a poor one. It is more rich, so to speak.

The rich image established its own set o

hierarchies, with new technologies also

creating more and more possibilities to

creatively degrade it.

2.

But insisting on rich images has also

more serious consequences. A speaker

at a conerence about essay lm recently

reused to show clips rom an essay lm by

Humphrey Jennings because there was no

proper lm projection. Although there was

a perectly standard DVD player and beam

available the audience was let to imagine,

what those pictures might have looked like.

In this case the invisibility was more orless voluntary and based on aesthetic

premises. But it has a much more general

equivalent based on the consequences o

the neoliberal revolution. During the last 20

or even 30 years, neoliberal restructuring

o media production slowly eclipsed non-

protable imagery rom sight to the point

o experimental and essayistic cinema

becoming almost invisible.

Resistant or non-conormist visual matterdisappeared rom the surace into an

underground o alternative archives and

collections. Sources or many videoprints

were extremely rare, tapes circulated rom

hand to hand, by word o mouth, within

circles o riends and colleagues. This

condition started to dramatically change

with the possibility to stream video online.

At present, there are at least 20 torrents

o Markers essay lms available. But the

economy o poor images is about more than

simple downloads: you can keep the les,

watch them again, even reedit or improve

them, i you think it necessary. And the

results circulate. Blurred AVI les o hal

orgotten masterpieces are exchanged on

semi-secret P2P platorms. Clandestine cell

phone videos smuggled out o museums

are broadcast on youtube. DVDs o artists

viewing copies are bartered2. Many works

o avantgarde, essay and non-commercialcinema have been resurrected as poor

images. Whether they like it or not.

3.

That rare prints o militant, experimental

and classical cinema as well as video art

works reappear as poor images is also

signicant on another level. Their situation

reveals much more than the content or

appearance o the images themselves:it also shows the conditions o their

marginalisation, the constellation o social

orces which leads to their online circulation

as poor images3. Poor images are poor,

because they are not being assigned any

value within the class society o images;

because they are illicit or degraded. Their

lack o resolution corresponds to their

lack o apparent exchange value or to their

appropriation and displacement4.

2 Sven Lttickens excellent text about the Viewing Copy

(efux journal #8) drew my attention to this aspect o

poor images.3 Thank you to Kodwo Eshun or pointing this out.4 O course in some cases, images with low resolution

also appear in mainstream media environments

(mainly news), where they are associated with

urgency, immediacy and catastrophe and extremely

valuable. See Hito Steyerl: Documentary Uncertainty.

http://magazines.documenta.de/rontend/article.

php?IdLanguage=1&NrArticle=584

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The poor image reveals the downturn and

degradation o the essay lm production

or indeed any experimental and non-

commercial cinema. But on the other hand,

the rampant privatisation o intellectual

content, as well as online-marketing and

commodication also enables piracy andappropriation: it gives rise to the circulation

o poor images.

4.

The emergence o poor images reminds one

o a classical maniesto o Third Cinema:

For an imperfect cinemaby Juan Garcia

Espinosa5, written in Cuba in the late 60s.

Espinosa argues or an imperect cinema,

because in his words: perect cinema

technically and artistically masterul is

almost always reactionary cinema. The

imperect cinema is a cinema, that strives

to overcome the divisions o labour within

class society. It blurs the distinction between

consumer and producer, audience and

author. It insists on its imperection, it is

popular but not consumerist, it is committed

without becoming bureaucratic.

In some way, the economy o poor images

corresponds to the description o imperect

cinema while the description o perectcinema rather represents the concept o

cinema as a fagship store. But the real and

contemporary imperect cinema is also much

more ambivalent and aective than Espinosa

had anticipated. On the one hand, the

economy o poor images, with its immediate

possibility o worldwide distribution and its

ethics o remix and appropriation enables

the participation o a much larger group o

producers than ever beore. But this does

not mean that these opportunities are onlyused or progressive ends. Hate speech,

spam and other rubbish sits through digital

connections. Digital communication has

additionally also become one o the most

contested markets; a zone, which or long

has been subjected to an ongoing original

accumulation and to massive (and to a large

extent successul) attempts o privatisation.

The networks in which poor images circulate

thus represent both platorms or a ragile

new common interest and battlegrounds

or commercial and national agendas. They

contain experimental and artistic material,

but also incredible amounts o porn and

paranoia. The territory o poor images allows

access to excluded imagery, but it is also is

permeated by the most advanced techniques

o commodication. While it enables theusers active participation in the creation

and spread o content, it also drats users

into production.

Poor images are thus popular images

images, that can be made and seen by the

many. They express all the contradictions

o the contemporary crowd: its opportunism,

narcissism, desire or autonomy and

creation, its unability to ocus or make up its

mind, constant readiness or transgression

and simultaneous submissiveness6. All

combined, poor images present a snapshot

o the aective condition o the crowd, its

neuroses, paranoia and ear, as well as its

craving or intensity, un and distraction.

Their condition not only speaks o countless

transers and reormattings, but also o the

countless people who cared enough or them

to convert them over and over again, to add

subtitles and to reedit or upload them.

In this light one has perhaps to redene

the value o images or more precisely, to

create a new perspective on it. Apart rom

resolution and exchange value, one might

imagine another orm o value dened

by velocity, intensity and spread. Poor

images are poor because they are heavily

compressed and travel quickly. They lose

matter and gain speed. But they also express

a condition o dematerialisation, which they

share not only with the legacy o conceptual

art7 but most o all with contemporary

modes o semiotic production.

5 For an imperect cinema by Julio Garca

Espinosa, translated by Julianne Burton rom

Jump Cut, no. 20, 1979, pp. 24-26 copyright

Jump Cut: A Review o Contemporary Media,

1979, 20056 See Paolo Virno: A Grammar o the Multitude.

Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press 2004.7 See Alex Alberro, Conceptual Art and the

Politics o Publicity Cambridge, Mass: MIT

Press, 2003.

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The history o conceptual art describes this

dematerialisation o the art object rst as

a resistant move against the etish value

o visibility. But then, the dematerialised

art object turns out to be perectly adapted

to the semioticisation o Capital, and thus

to the conceptual turn o capitalism8

. Thepoor image is in a way set within a similar

tension. On the one hand it operates

against the etish value o resolution. On

the other hand, this is precisely why it

also ends up being perectly integrated

into an inormation capitalism thriving on

compressed attention spans, on impression

rather than immersion, on intensity rather

than contemplation, on previews rather

than screenings.

5.

But simultaneously, a paradoxical reversal

happens. The circulation o poor images

creates a circuit, which ullls the original

ambitions o militant and (partly) essayistic

and experimental cinema to create an

alternative economy o images, an imperect

cinema which exists inside as well as beyond

and beneath commercial media streams. In

the age o le sharing, even marginalised

content circulates again and reconnects

dispersed worldwide audiences.

The poor image constructs anonymous

global networks as well as creating a shared

history. As it travels, it builds alliances, it

provokes translation or mistranslation and

creates new publics and debates. By losing

its visual substance it recovers some o

its political punch and creates a new aura

around it. This aura is no more based on

the permanence o the original but on

the transience o the copy. It is no moreanchored within a classical public sphere

mediated and supported by the rame o the

nation state or corporation, but foats on

the surace o temporary and dubious data

pools9. By driting away rom the vaults

o cinema it is propelled onto new and

ephemeral screens stitched up by the desire

o dispersed spectators.

The circulation o poor images both eeds

into capitalist media assembly lines and

alternative audiovisual economies. It

coexists with media mainstreams and is

usually dependent on them but it is also

based on barter, thet or appropriation. It

dees the measures o the market, and its

way o counting and extracting value, while

at the same time creating new markets and

values. It thus starts another chapter in

the historical genealogy o nonconormist

inormation circuits: Vertovs visual bonds,

the internationalist workers pedagogies

which Peter Weiss described in hisAesthetics o Resistance, the circuits

o Third Cinema and Tricontinentalism,

o non-aligned lmmaking and thinking.

6. Now!

The poor image embodies the aterlie o

many ormer masterpieces o cinema and

video art. It has been expelled rom the

sheltered paradise, that cinema seems to

once have been10. Ater being kicked out

rom the protected and oten protectionistarena o national culture, and discarded rom

commercial circulation, these works have

become travelers in a digital no-man's land,

constantly changing resolution and ormat,

speed and media container, sometimes even

losing names and credits on their way.

Now, many o these works are back. As poor

images, I agree. One could o course argue,

that this is not the real thing, but then,

please anybody, show this real thing to me.

The poor image is not anymore about the

real thing; the original and its origin.

Instead, it is about its own real conditions

o existence: about swarm circulation,

digital dispersion and ractured and fexible

temporalities. It is about deance and

appropriation as well as about conormism

and exploitation.

In short: it is about reality.

8 See Alex Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics o

Publicity Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2003.9 Pirate Bay even seems to have tried acquiring the

extraterritorial oil platorm o Sealand in order to

install its servers there.10 At least rom the perspective o nostalgic

delusion.

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Collective22 28 Cockburn StreetEdinburghEH1 1NY

t: +44 (0) 131 220 1260

w: www.collectivegallery.nete: [email protected]

In association with

Collective is committed tosupporting new visual artthrough a programme oexhibitions, projects andcommissions.

Originally established asan artist run organisationin 1984 the Collective is aninternational organisationor the production, research,presentation and distributiono contemporary art andculture with a specic ocuson new visual art andpractices. We aim to oster,support and debate newwork and practices in a way

which is o mutual benet toartists and audiences.

Documents

HitoSteyerl Catalogue