Hito Steyerl has not only suffered the effects of the pandemic. The 55-year-old German-Japanese artist has drawn a work from it and staged his ecological concerns in the major retrospective, aptly called “I Will Survive”, which opens at the Center Pompidou on May 19. Refusing to contribute to the usual waste of plinths and picture rails, it has thus chosen to reuse the scenography of the “Christo and Jeanne-Claude” exhibition organized last year at the museum.
Likewise, his latest video, dubbed Social Sim, partially recycled unused rushes from his previous films. In this room, avatars of police officers, treated like a video game, are suddenly seized with an irrepressible desire to dance, to the point of exhaustion. Hito Steyerl was inspired by the chorémanie or dancing mania that hit the city of Strasbourg in the XVIe century, a phenomenon of collective trance sometimes interpreted as the manifestation of the distress of the poorest populations. A “Metaphor of our time, where illusion, disinformation, conspiracy theory have gone viral”, explains the artist.
The art world, as it prospered without asking too many questions before Covid-19, was the “corrupt product of neoliberal globalization”, according to Hito Steyerl.
The pandemic, according to Hito Steyerl, has only intensified political surveillance and economic exploitation, under the guise of digital happiness. Rather than rejecting this new deal altogether, the rhetorician points to ambivalence. The art world, as it thrived without asking too many questions before Covid-19, was the “Corrupt product of a neoliberal globalization”, she says.
However, the artist observes without joy the sudden end of the great international meetings, which caused the return of the vernacular, of folklore and its corollary, nationalism. “This danger is greater than the situation before “, she analyzes. At its own level, it therefore regrets the online switch of activities and exchanges, which reinforces a “Toxic digital bubble, colonized by large groups”. She nevertheless adapts her practice, thus imagining virtual versions of the Beaubourg exhibition. Eyes still wide open, mind sharper than ever.
Greetings banter
Whether through his films, video installations or lectures, Hito Steyerl multiplies the critical angles on our society in a clever mix of rigor and conciseness. His sarcastic writings greedily destroy a populated art world “Charming bastards, brutal kings and almost beauty queens”, can we read on the e-flux site. Everyone takes it for their rank.
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