The Institute of Modern Art (IMA) is pleased to present Too Much World, the first survey in Australia of the artist, writer, and filmmaker Hito Steyerl. Running from 13 December 2014 to 22 March 2015, this comprehensive exhibition features six works from the past decade, including Liquidity Inc., which premiered earlier this year.
Steyerl is a leading figure in the critical articulation of how the Internet, digital technologies, and images are transforming life, work, and politics. Her videos offer timely, insightful, and entertaining perspectives on the plethora of images that swirl around us and are appropriated, edited, and recirculated in an endless and accelerating flow. Her video installations comprise self-reflexive combinations of specific technologies and bespoke environments that elaborate on the content of the moving image. Her masterful use of montage echoes the everyday pace and practices of the digital age, revealing truths and potentials, with an innovative approach to documentary practice.
In a recent essay, Steyerl focuses on the term ‘circulationism’ as way of understanding the contemporary potential of art and the image. She suggests: “What the Soviet avant-garde of the twentieth century called productivism – the claim that art should enter production and the factory – could now be replaced by circulationism. Circulationism is not about the art of making an image, but of post-producing, launching, and accelerating it. It is about the public relations of images across social networks, about advertisement and alienation, and about being as suavely vacuous as possible.”
Too Much World Publication
In conjunction with the exhibition, the IMA, the Van Abbemuseum, and Sternberg Press have co-published a collection of essays also titled Too Much World. The publication features texts by Steyerl, Sven Lütticken, Pablo Lafuente, Thomas Elsaesser, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Karen Archey, Nick Aikens, and David Riff. The publication is edited by Nick Aikens and designed by Bardhi Haliti.
Curators
Too Much World is curated by Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh, Directors of the IMA in association with Annie Fletcher, Curator of Exhibitions, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
Exhibition Design
The exhibition has spatial design by Studio Miessen.
Partner
Too Much World is presented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Australia.
