Still from 'Lovely Andrea', 2007
Still from 'November', 2004
'Red Alert', 2007
Although Hito Steyerl had works at Manifesta 5 in 2004, at Documenta last year and other major exhibitions, her work remains better known in the field of film than in contemporary art. Her work is informed by film history, and she teaches film courses, but she uses the platform of art to put the structure of film-making itself under a magnifying lens.
This exhibition at Kunsthalle Winterthur shows four major works by Steyerl: the 2004 work 'November', 2007's 'Lovely Andrea' and 'Journal No. 1 and the monochromatic work 'Red Alert', also from 2007. In the earliest work, 'November', the artist makes no attempt to suggest that her position is objective, as her source material is a film she and a friend made in their youth where a group of militant girls fought domineering male forces. These excerpts are marked by the choreography and ethics of police drama and martial arts movies; hope and determination overcome better-armed opponents with evil intent. Rather than merely a found fragment, or a illustration of a dated genre, these are poignant memories of Steyerl's friend, as Andrea Wolf, then 17, later worked alongside the RAF terrorist group and then the PKK in Kurdistan, before ultimately being assassinated by the Turkish army. Naturally November has been created with the benefit of hindsight, but Steyerl lays bare the innocence and aspirations of her youth in order to question how images of terrorism and of struggle are created, the grey area between justified opposition and violence, and how polarised stereotypes have an unfortunate habit of becoming reality.
'Journal No. 1' is a search for the first Bosnian newscast, a film of an adult literacy class first shown in 1947. The film was lost or destroyed during the Balkan war of the 1990s, a conflict whose physical and psychological scars are still apparent in Bosnia. While the artist's crew tries to track down the looted or destroyed film archive, she also attempts to create a new illustration of the reel's scenes from collective memory, a vain enterprise as each interviewee's memory differs. In the making of 'Journal No 1' Steyerl meets suspicion and animosity, conspiracy theories, regret and anger, and puts paid to the fallacy of certainty which informs most reports of our recent history.
Both 'Journal No 1' and 'Lovely Andrea' were shown at last year's Documenta in Kassel, but while the Bosnian film was hidden in an outside venue, 'Lovely Andrea' was one of the most popular works in the exhibition. The film follows another search, this time to reclaim the bondage images the artist posed for while a film student in Japan. The film has a ringside view of how bondage material is produced, and while it is a highly personal film, it does not wallow in victimisation or judgement, but questions how shame and disgust inform actions. 'Red Alert', the work that gives this exhibition its title, consists of three monitors which each display a still of the colour US Homeland Security use to denote the highest threat of terrorism. Referencing Aleksandr Rodchenko's monochrome works of 1921 that signalled a crisis in painting, Hito Steyerl's works also mark a point of impasse if not no return, when the standard diet images of aggressors and enemies has reached such a fever pitch that escaping notions of grievance and persecution becomes impossible
Aoife Rosenmeyer
To watch an interview with Hito Steyerl on Saatchi Online TV click here.
Hito Steyerl - Red Alert
Kunsthalle Winterthur
Until 27 July
Aoife Rosenmeyer is based in Zürich after several years as a curator with Artwise in London. In Switzerland she is doing all manner of work art related and contributing to publications including Art World Magazine.
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