Saturday Talks: Kay Watson on Hito Steyerl

Curator Kay Watson leads a tour of the Hito Steyerl exhibition. BSL interpretation is available on request for all our Saturday Talks.

Steyerl’s new project for the Serpentine Galleries considers power and inequality in society, mapping unequal wealth distribution in the communities surrounding the Serpentine that has been recorded as one of the most socially uneven areas in Europe. Visitors to the exhibition see an augmented reality app designed to expand our social vision of some local communities to reveal what Steyerl calls Actual Reality, a series of guided neighbourhood ‘power walks’ and a new video installation created using artificial intelligence trained to predict the future.

Beginning with the premise that ‘’’power’’ is the necessary condition for any digital technology’, Steyerl considers the multiple meanings of the word, including electrical currents, the ecological powers of plants or natural elements and the complex networks of authority that shape our environments.