Now on view on our website, a selection of seminal video works by Harun Farocki and Hito Steyerl are drawn together for an online exhibition following our recent London show Life Captured Still. Curated by Antje Ehmann and Carles Guerra, the exhibition brings together two pioneers in the fields of documentary film and new media art, whose work is often conceptually associated but is shown in dialogue for the first time.Nobody imagined that this exhibition and so many others would have to be closed off to the public. That the works so carefully chosen and placed in each room would be abandoned to the solitude of a closed gallery. In this moment we come across a different version of what being human means. This is what we can learn from Harun Farocki and Hito Steyerl. How to be better humans after operational images have taken over the world, which before was dominated by humans. How to survive a reality in which we no longer trust the world we see and experience at a remote distance. And how to experience a decent enjoyment of art in a dramatic situation that would normally exclude such a priority.
– Antje Ehmann and Carles Guerra Somehow, until right now, nobody had properly surveyed Farocki and Steyerl’s work together… The two share a concise set of interests and artistic approaches… they weave together seemingly unlike events and ideas, coolly delighting in the phantom threads they find along the way that cross national and ideological borders.– ARTnews