Hito Steyerl: In Free Fall

About

Through intertwined narratives of people, planes and places Steyerl reveals cycles of capitalism incorporating and adapting to the changing status of the commodity, but also points at a horizon beyond this endless repetition. Hito Steyerl's films are a montage of pop and politics, Hollywood and independent film, interviews and voice-over commentaries, all combined into provocative filmic analyses of the present. In Free Fall incorporates a trio of works: Before the Crash, After the Crash and Crash, which tell the story of the current global economic crisis through the example of an aeroplane junkyard in the Californian desert. The aeroplane junkyard reveals the anatomy of all sorts of crashes: both fictional and real. This is an investigation of planes as they are parked during the economic downturn, stored and recycled, revealing unexpected connections between economy, violence and spectacle. An example of this is the Boeing 4X-JYI, first acquired by film director Howard Hughes for TWA, which then flew for the Israeli Airforce before it was blown up for the Hollywood blockbuster, Speed. But the economic crisis doesn't stop short of affecting the film industry either. Hito Steyerl is an internationally acclaimed artist and theoretician based in Berlin. She is a prolific writer, filmmaker, theorist and teacher. Crash, the culmination of In Free Fall is a new work co-commissioned by Collective, Edinburgh, Chisenhale Gallery, London and Picture This, Bristol. Funded with the support of Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.