In the latest program of the “Philosophical Theater” in the Croatian National Theater HNK on 17 June, 2018, Srecko Horvat presented the famous German artist and scientist PhD. Hito Steyerl. The New York Times  claimed “Hito Steyerl Is an Artist With Power. She Uses It for Change.”(Postmodernism as fragmentation is full of banality and conversation about it, taken out of context, can be perceived as such, so it was not allowed to record video during the talk!)

Hito Steyerl (born 1966 in Munich) is a German filmmaker, visual artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary. Her principal topics of interest are media, technology, and the global circulation of images. Steyerl holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is currently a professor of New Media Art at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she co-founded the Research Center for Proxy Politics, together with Vera Tollmann and Boaz Levin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hito_Steyerl  )

Steyerl’s famous for her essays and one of it is: “In Defense of the Poor Image” (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image  )

She prefers low resolution images, almost abstract… These days: Images are looking people! (We can see the connection to W.J.T. Mitchell’s notion from the book „What do pictures want?“ and the theory of J. Baudrillard.)

„The poor image is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation.

In short: it is about reality.“ 

In her new essay she discusses „Art of arts“ – a dystopian idea. It seems as an extension of her book „Duty Free Art“ (Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War) where she points to new storages of art as new substitutes for museums. (https://www.e-flux.com/journal/63/60894/duty-free-art  )

She writes: „Huge art storage spaces are being created worldwide in what could essentially be called a luxury no man’s land, tax havens where artworks are shuffled around from one storage room to another once they get traded. This is also one of the prime spaces for contemporary art: an offshore or extraterritorial museum. (…) Freeport art storage facilities are secret museums. (…)The idea of duty-free art has one major advantage over the nation-state cultural model: duty-free art ought to have no duty—no duty to perform, to represent, to teach, to embody value.”

While discussing the technology and some predicting programs in sports, Steyerl as a media and technology artist claimed Artificial Intelligence has a shadow! She named it – Artificial Stupidity! But she uses technology – in terms of innovative and eduactional tools.

The question from the audience: as well as Karl Marx, Steyerl gives an overview and why not solutions?! She answered: we are not „omnipotent“ individuals but collectively creative through education and collective play (University has to be close to the Universe!).

The pleasant atmosphere of this philosophical talk has been completed as humorously as Srećko’s “Pink Freud” on his t-shirt!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MV