Good morning everyone,

How are you doing, are you well? I want to introduce you today to an artist whose work I love, Hito Steyerl, but first I want to tell you how I encountered her work.

I was in New York for work. We'd been doing a big event, the event had gone well, the afterparty had gone well, then we went to a bar after the afterparty and had shots and I guess they went down well, then, much later, we got a cab to a club night in Brooklyn. I remember having conversations like the ones you have in fresher's week. The ones where one part of your mind is thinking THIS IS A GREAT INTERACTION! THiNGS ARE GOING VERY WELL! and the other is thinking but am i absorbing or constructing meaning? shouldn't that be happening? traditionally? in a conversation?

This sets the scene for how I felt the next morning.

I and a friend – also feeling rancid – had made plans to go to MoMa the day after the event, and like troopers we stuck. right. with. that resolve. I don't think we knew how bad things actually were until we were getting tickets and, on finding out that we were from London, the woman behind the desk told us that she was going to London, what would we recommend doing?

"…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"The Tate… Modern… is a good gallery", my friend finally managed.

"Also… the Hayward… it's very close. To the Tate. Modern.", I said in a feeble attempt at a "build".

Those of you who know London will have spotted what just happened. Someone asked us for a recommendation for London, the most visited city in the world, and we volunteered the most visited tourist attraction in London and another gallery a matter of yards away from it. She already worked in a major art gallery in a world city! She had probably heard about the Tate Modern.

I stood there, feeling like sweat was being physically squeezed from my person. My eyebrows, my breastbone, my knees. I was about to make a last ditch attempt to salvage the situation and say "you could… have… a curry", when this woman – now looking really quite worried – pointed out to us that we had our tickets and could perhaps take the opportunity to get out of line.

I hope that this paints a picture for you of how we were feeling when we found Hito Steyerl's amazing work LIQUIDITY INC. This is the setup; note the beanbags and the calming blue light:

https://www.icaboston.org/art/hito-steyerl/liquidity-inc

The runtime of LIQUIDITY INC is apparently 30 minutes. We certainly watched it in its entirety. I think we probably spent about 45 minutes spaced out in front of it but it's not impossible that we watched it all twice plus a bit. It was perfect. Weird, funny, disconcerting, kind. I wish it were online. If it comes to a gallery near you (for example, the Tate Modern or the Hayward) make every effort to see it.

Here's an interview with Hito Steyerl about a London exhibition she did:

Actual Reality OS is one of four commissions Steyerl has produced for the Serpentine, each exploring politics and technology. Inside its darkened Sackler Gallery, stacks of screens show accelerated footage of plants evolving. Familiar varieties – lily, rose, cactus – have had their futures predicted by artificial intelligence. Steyerl describes these sci-fi flora as “ruderal” – a term for plants that colonise disturbed lands, such as the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/apr/12/hito-steyerl-serpentine-sackler-building-should-be-unnamed

Here's one of her videos as well – you can't get the full immersive experience, of course, but you can maybe make it full screen and get a sense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptNczdY-qvo

Have a great weekend everyone, enjoy art responsibly,

A xxx.