The intersection between film and visual art is an important focus of exhibition policy at EYE. To underline this, EYE and the Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor Arts Fund launched an annual prize in 2015 to commission new work from artist filmmakers whose work has demonstrated an important contribution to this interdisciplinary field. The first exhibition devoted to the EYE Art & Film Prize features the work of the first three winners, all of whom display social commitment in their artistic practice. They are Hito Steyerl (b. 1966, Germany), Ben Rivers (b. 1972, Britain) and Wang Bing (b. 1967, China). The winner of the fourth EYE Art & Film Prize will be announced on 5 April. Hito Steyerl (EYE Art & Film Prize 2015) Based in Berlin, Hito Steyerl (b. 1966) is one of the most prominent video artists working today. Educated as a filmmaker at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich, she effortlessly transcends the boundaries between film and visual art in her perceptive and often humorous work. In addition, she explores the role of the media in a globalized world, and the staggering speed at which images and knowledge circulate thanks to digital technology, a phenomenon that, in one of her essays, she has called ‘circulationism’. She argues that most images no longer just represent reality, but actually intervene in that reality. Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, installation photo Venice Biennale (2015), photo Manuel Reinartz.1

Ben River, installation photo Camden Arts Centre, London (2015), photo Valerie Bennett.1

Wang Bing, 15 Hours (2017)