Hito Steyerl: I Dreamed A Dream - Politics in the Age of Mass Art Production

On view 1 – 30 June 2016

In this video lecture, Hito Steyerl speaks about the social function of art and artistic role models in the present day: I DREAMED A DREAM: POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MASS ART PRODUCTION (2014). The technical simplification of firearms once democratized the power privilege of the ruling class. Today art has become a mass phenomenon; its elitism has ruptured. But what is being democratized here? Standing in line for humiliating talent shows? The futile hopes of a growing class of urban poor for a creative career? Steyerl takes Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables as the center of a story about rebellion and self-exploitation, the artistic mythos and the culture industry. In this narrative the guerrillero Comrade X and the talent-show legend Susan Boyle end up in the same boat as Steyerl and her listeners, dreaming the strange dream of the struggle for freedom in creative capitalism. (Alexander Koch, KOW)

Credits:
Recording: Former West project, Berlin; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Cast: Apo, Neman Kara, Tina Leisch, Sahin Okay, Siyar, Selim Yildiz Commissioned by: Anton Vidokle for Agency of Unrealised Projects

Documentation of a lecture given at Former West, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, March 2013

This lecture is not for sale. Institutions can add it to non-profit collections against a donation for Kurdish municipality refugee relief efforts. - See more at: www.kow-berlin.info