THE WORK OF HITO STEYERL
Urban Video Project’s program year opens with world-renowned artist Hito Steyerl’s Strike (2010). Hito Steyerl’s work explores late capitalism’s social, cultural, and financial imaginaries. Strike will be on view at UVP’s outdoor projection site on the north facade of the Everson Museum of Art at 401 Harrison Street, Thursday through Saturday, from dusk until 11pm.
Strike is a short, humorous film squarely in the tradition of Fluxus performance and wordplay. The title of the work plays on the double meaning of the word “strike.” Most obviously, a strike is a physically violent gesture, in this case against a flatscreen monitor, both a highly fetishized commodity and an object that, when working, “disappears” behind the spectacle it presents. On the other hand, a strike is the strategic refusal to work. The double meaning here short circuits the two terminals of our contemporary split identity as consumer-workers.