Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl is one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Her work, both as an artist and a writer, has consistently challenged the political boundaries between art and technol­ogy. In this new collection of groundbreaking essays, she explores how AI, the use of large language models and the algorithmic creation of imagery transform our understanding of the world. She argues that such practices cannot be divorced from the economic and political conditions of the times. Medium Hot is a collection of scintillating meditations on the limits of art and technol­ogy: the essential handbook for the present conjuncture. The pieces here probe the man­ufacture and distribution of images in the age of AI and climate change. She asks whether art can be made not only by machines but for machines. She argues against the production of images that heat up the planet, disfranchise workers and fuel the arms trade, and questions whether such creations can even be called art. In an era of such rapid change, Steyerl does vital work investigating whether machine learning will infiltrate every aspect of our lives and what that means for the future.

Hito Steyerl is one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Her work, both as an artist and a writer, has consistently challenged the political boundaries between art and technol­ogy. In this new collection of groundbreaking essays, she explores how AI, the use of large language models and the algorithmic creation of imagery transform our understanding of the world. She argues that such practices cannot be divorced from the economic and political conditions of the times.Medium Hot is a collection of scintillating meditations on the limits of art and technol­ogy: the essential handbook for the present conjuncture. The pieces here probe the man­ufacture and distribution of images in the age of AI and climate change. She asks whether art can be made not only by machines but for machines. She argues against the production of images that heat up the planet, disfranchise workers and fuel the arms trade, and questions whether such creations can even be called art.In an era of such rapid change, Steyerl does vital work investigating whether machine learning will infiltrate every aspect of our lives and what that means for the future.

A massive, long-overdue retrospective on the multimedia image critique of Hito Steyerl, influential artist and author of Duty-Free Art and The Wretched of the ScreenOver the past 30 years, through video and installation, the immensely influential German artist and writer Hito Steyerl (born 1966) has been tracking the ways that images have mutated--from the analogue image and its manifold possibilities for montage to the fluidity of the split digital image--and the implications these mutations have had for the representation of wars, genocides and the flow of capital. "We are no longer dealing with the virtual but with a confusing and possibly alien concreteness that we are only beginning to understand," writes Brian Kuan Wood of the digital visual worlds that the artist presents. At nearly 500 pages, this book--the first substantial overview on Steyerl--looks at multimedia installations and film projects of the past ten years, as well as earlier works, all of which are united by the artist's unflagging interrogation of the politics of the image.

Rigt illustreret udstillingskatalog m. tekst af Ferdinand Ahm Krag. Tekst: dansk/English

I samarbejde med Ny Carlsbergfondet lancerer Informations Forlag serien Bibliotek for ny kunstteori - en række oversættelser af international kunst- og kulturteori. Toldfri kunst af Hito Steyerl er første udgivelse i serien. Hvad er kunstens rolle i den digitale globaliserings æra? Hvordan kan vi overhovedet lave og nyde kunst i dag? De spørgsmål stiller og besvarer kunstneren Hito Steyerl på svimlende vis i Toldfri Kunst. Hun udforsker alt fra computerspil over WikiLeaks-lækket til politisk aktivisme og udbredelsen af kunst-frihavne og blotlægger derved globaliseringens og den visuelle kulturs paradokser. Om forfatteren: Hito Steyerl (f. 1966) er tysk kunstner, filmskaber, forfatter og fornyer af essayfilmen. Steyerl er professor i mediekunst ved Universität der Künste i Berlin, og hendes værker udstilles over hele verden.ANMELDELSER: “Teorien og kunstens eneste opgave er at indfange og artikulere deres egen tid. I vores samtid, klarer Hito Steyerl dette som ingen andre. Hendes undersøgelse af troen pa° billeder og ord i denne tid for global cirkulation er altid fokuseret og præcise – men ogsa° eventyrlystne, uventede og fascinerende.” - Boris Groys

In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age. What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums, and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as a fictional currency in a global futures market that has nothing to do with the work itself? Can we distinguish between creativity and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring artefacts as diverse as video games, Wikileaks files, the proliferation of spam, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.

How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them?How do “human” prejudices reemerge in algorithmic cultures allegedly devised to be blind to them? To answer this question, this book investigates a fundamental axiom in computer science: pattern discrimination. By imposing identity on input data, in order to filter-that is, to discriminate-signals from noise, patterns become a highly political issue. Algorithmic identity politics reinstate old forms of social segregation, such as class, race, and gender, through defaults and paradigmatic assumptions about the homophilic nature of connection.Instead of providing a more “objective” basis of decision making, machine-learning algorithms deepen bias and further inscribe inequality into media. Yet pattern discrimination is an essential part of human-and nonhuman-cognition. Bringing together media thinkers and artists from the United States and Germany, this volume asks the urgent questions: How can we discriminate without being discriminatory? How can we filter information out of data without reinserting racist, sexist, and classist beliefs? How can we queer homophilic tendencies within digital cultures?

Proposing an alternative history of the optical image, Picture Industry explores the materiality of images and the technologies that govern their reception.Spanning from the late 19th century to the present with images produced for scientific and artistic contexts, Picture Industry includes the work of more than 70 artists and practitioners. But this is not a typical exhibition catalog; it goes beyond the exhibition, presenting an anthology of texts that reveal the range of methodological approaches to the world of images. Picture Industry brings together essays by, among others, Giorgio Agamben, Cory Arcangel, Ariella Azoulay, Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, Ericka Beckman, Walter Benjamin, Georges Didi-Huberman, Thomas A. Edison, Harun Farocki, Morgan Fisher, Vilem Flusser, Coco Fusco, Tristan Garcia, Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas, Sigfried Giedion, Mark Godfrey, Kenneth Goldsmith, Dan Graham, Friedrich A. Kittler, Boris Mikhailov, Craig Owens, Erwin Panofsky, Seth Price, Siegfried Kracauer, Rosalind Krauss, Bruno Latour, Etienne-Jules Marey, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Hito Steyerl, William Henry Fox Talbot, Gilles de la Tourette and Alan Turing.