Window Projections
"Strike" by Hito Steyerl

n.b.k. Video-Forum | Window Projections

Mon, 09/18/2023 -
Sun, 09/24/2023
Goethe-Institut Montreal

The Goethe-Institut Montreal, in cooperation with the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), presents a screening programme of 20 video works from n.b.k Video-Forum’s extensive video art collection, curated by Anna Lena Seiser (Head of Collection n.b.k. Video-Forum).

The individual films will be shown for a week at a time sunset to 2:00 a.m. on the display windows of the Goethe-Institut at 1626 Boul. St-Laurent, Montréal, Québec, H2X 2T1, Canada and can be viewed on an indoor screen during the Goethe-Institut's opening hours:

Strike

Hito Steyerl
2010
00:35 Min.

Strike, Steyerl's shortest film to date, shows a very direct act of media criticism: the artist approaches a black LCD flatscreen with a hammer and chisel, sets to work and shatters it with a well-aimed blow. The cracks in the surface and the resulting mirror effects produce a new, abstract-aesthetic image, which in turn is reminiscent of early experiments in video art. With her impacting gesture, Hito Steyerl reminds us of the physical reality of media images.

Hito Steyerl (*1966 in Munich, lives in Berlin) is one of the most influential artists of our time and has significantly shaped the discourse around the so-called “Documentary Turn” since the 1990s. Both her theoretical texts and artistic works in the mediums of video, film, and performance examine postcolonial and feminist critiques of representation, breaking open and penetrating the documentary through strategies of fictionalization. Her essay films and large-scale video installations investigate the politics of images, questioning aesthetic mechanisms of power while shedding light on political conflicts, social change in our technologized society, and the workings of our capitalist lifeworld.