Recommended by CS tutor Matt White, Hito Steryerl – Guardian review (can’t believe I missed this!):

• “Tart, funny and furious, filled with rants and “semi-poems”, Steyerl’s latest project is difficult to approach” I love the term semi-poems! I think this probably suits my loose text-based ramblings. I hate calling them poems. They’re not and the word, unfortunately, feels a little grandiose or archaic nowadays.
• “Once configured (and doing that already had me hyperventilating), your phone is now your interface with the gallery. Forget direct looking. Forget an embodied experience. Only connect, the app store and a strong enough wifi signal willing.”
• “more and more people let their phones do the looking, trying to capture on their devices the experience they are not really having. I am far from immune.” This is our world… today I talked about the journey towards a simulated reality which will be indistinguishable from the one we currently think of as ‘real’ (and there are plenty of examples of  “more-than-human” (Lupton, 2019) hybrids – e.g. chips helping to regulate heart rate https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/loop-recorder-implantation. but more than that we are integrating with our phones. They more than represent us. They are us.
• “With this complicated splicing of fact and fantasy, social reality and grim futurology, Steyerl sucks us in. But don’t get too seduced, she seems to be saying. Along with the fun stuff and the pretty flowers in the gallery, life for many people is hell. Hear their voices, walk with them.?
• I wonder how much she relied on others to help bring this to fruition. I always think of my roots with Brecht and making work with no money – this is virtually impossible in today’s work if you’re trying to address the construction of a seamless alternative reality (which is no longer alternative). Screens, technology, expertise – all of these cost and so this type of work which I love because it’s addressing current concerns (unlike the endless iterations fo alternative processes) BUT it’s inherently elitist.
• Looking forward to finding out more.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/apr/10/hito-steyerl-review-serpentine-sackler-gallery-london

 

Searle, Adrian (2019) ‘Much of the experience is meant to be horrible’: Hito Steyerl review | Art and design | The Guardian. [Online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/apr/10/hito-steyerl-review-serpentine-sackler-gallery-london (Accessed 04/11/2019).

MOCA (2016) What is Contemporary? A Conversation with Hito Steyerl [Online] At: https://www.moca.org/program/what-is-contemporary-a-conversation-with-hito-steyerl (Accessed 04/11/2019).

Hito Steyerl, (2013) How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational.MOV File, 2013 [Online Magazine] At: https://www.artforum.com/video/hito-steyerl-how-not-to-be-seen-a-fucking-didactic-educational-mov-file-2013-51651 (Accessed 04/11/2019).