Born in 1966 in Munich. Lives and works in Berlin.
Represented by the Esther Schipper gallery (Berlin).
Through this short video loop, Hito Steyerl hits a black LCD screen with a wood chisel and cuts through its surface, under the effect of shock, a network of multicolored cracks. The word STRIKE, which frames this minimal performance and means "to strike something" or "to go on strike", therefore implies an act of collision, disturbance, protest or resistance. It can be read either as an imperative that encourages us to join the artist in his action. It is therefore akin to a protest movement against the power of screens. Or like an iconoclastic gesture revealing the mode of production, appearance and diffusion of images. By breaking this screen, Steyerl therefore updates the material and technological infrastructures, as well as their political and ideological implications, which underlie all representational content ... And underlines that the screen does indeed determine what remains visible or invisible to society, to our minds and to our eyes.
