Alice Pelot
"If photography was a civil contract between the people who participate in it, then the current withdrawal from representation is the breaking of a social contract, having promised participation but delivered gossip, surveillance, evidence, serial narcissism, as well as occasional uprisings."[1]
- Hito Steyerl
In Hito Steyerl’s essay The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation, she follows the logic of Ariella Azoulay from her text The Civil Contract of Photography, and finds that despite the failures of ‘representation’,[2] withdrawing from it altogether still constitutes the breach of photography’s social contract. Steyerl's condemning attitude towards contemporary means of ‘representation’ begs the question: why is it breaking with the social contract if ‘representation’ has failed to meet our expectations? Azoulay argues that the civil right to photograph and be photographed is the basis of the contract. In other words, our participation in the public right to photograph constitutes our duty; to occupy a position guarding that right even if we do not exercise it at all times. Participation is more complex as we leave behind cameras as our primary means of representation, and move towards instantaneous digitization and permeable Internet connections. How are we meant to occupy a digital space? And what are the new terms of photography as a civil contract in new digital mediums of ‘representation’? By connecting Steyerl’s essays to her video works How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013) and Is the Museum a Battlefield?[3] it is clear that military occupation is a useful metaphor for participation in the civil contract of ‘representation’.
In 2013, Hito Steyerl produced a video called How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File. The work is inspired by photo calibration targets in the Californian desert (paved surfaces used to test resolution for analogue aerial photographers) that have been abandoned for higher technologies. As a parody of the ‘how to’ video format, she outlines how one can become invisible both through ‘representation’ and by withdrawing from it. The first half of the video outlines these various methods including camouflage, becoming smaller than a pixel based on a resolution target, or just to pretend you are not there. These suggestions are humorous, but she does acknowledge the more serious, anxiety-ridden aspects of withdrawing from representation including being a woman over the age of fifty, living in a military complex, or being disappeared by your government. The second half of Steyerl’s video is a montage combining all these suggestions, and the ghosts of those who are left out of ‘representation’, all while referencing the medium and processes of digital invisibility to the tune of When Will I See You Again by The Three Degrees. Aesthetically the work is a collage of intentionally unrefined video techniques and poor quality images. Steyerl wrote about the poor quality, digital image in 2009 in her essay In Defense of the Poor Image,[4] as an object like any other, reducing in quality as it circulates. The more an image circulates the more it is viewed, but paradoxically, as the image reduces in quality the less visible its subjects become. This is less true now than it was in 2009. Re-circulated images are often restored in quality and often their subjects are never reduced to invisibility. Invisibility is made out to be a privilege for those who can escape ‘representation’ while also being a prison for those who feel visibility is inaccessible. There are many reasons for withdrawing from ‘representation’, but the ghosts of those who are not granted this right alone are enough to reconsider the repercussions.
Ariella Azoulay, in her text The Civil Contract of Photography,[5] published in 2008, explores the conditions of the citizenship created by photography – who is involved and how it subverts sovereign power. The process and aftermath of photography is that which cultivates a citizenry of photography including the photographer, the photographed, the observer and the viewer. Separately, the subjects of the photographs and the photographs as object are not autonomous; they are not exempt from ownership, sovereign power or hierarchy. Even though the photographs as objects are not exempt from ownership, the right to own a camera and participate in photography has been a public right since its creation.[6] Under this principle, the public right and potential to photograph, be photographed, or see photographs is a civil duty.
Ariella Azoulay, in her text The Civil Contract of Photography,[5] published in 2008, explores the conditions of the citizenship created by photography – who is involved and how it subverts sovereign power. The process and aftermath of photography is that which cultivates a citizenry of photography including the photographer, the photographed, the observer and the viewer. Separately, the subjects of the photographs and the photographs as object are not autonomous; they are not exempt from ownership, sovereign power or hierarchy. Even though the photographs as objects are not exempt from ownership, the right to own a camera and participate in photography has been a public right since its creation.[6] Under this principle, the public right and potential to photograph, be photographed, or see photographs is a civil duty.
"The duty derived from the civil contract of photography is simultaneously to reject one’s claims to be the owner of a photograph that one possesses as well as anyone’s attempt to appoint him or herself as a guardian of another in an attempt to prevent that other person from being photographed."[7]
- Ariella Azoulay
The civil contract of photography can be breached in two instances. First, if a citizen gives up their photographic right by withdrawing from representation, they are abandoning their duty to include those who are otherwise without citizenship such as refugees. They are also creating space for the invasion of sovereign power, a space that they otherwise would have occupied. Second, if a citizen of photography were to assert ownership over an image or manipulate it for political or economic gain, they maintain the power to manipulate the original political action or conceal the image from the public. The former situation means that many people are without representation, and the later means that there are many images without accurate referent. The citizenry of photography or of ‘representation’ is the space between these growing extremes. It is a practice, “by means of which individuals can establish a distance between themselves and power in order to observe its actions and to do so not as its subjects.”[8] Thus, photography creates space for autonomy. Can this be said of participation in increasingly varied digital forms of ‘representation’?
It may be a breach of contract to withdraw from ‘representation’ where it promises participation and citizenry but a mass exodus from a ‘representation’ without a referent can hardly be considered a breaking of social contract. The benefits of spam’s promises for recession-proof degrees and pills that ‘melt fat’ or ‘cure depression’ are only experienced by its models, posing as graduates and doctors in the ever-circulating world of spam. In Steyerl’s essay The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation from 2012,[9] she suggests a naïveté in assuming that the nature of spam is only in its capacity to trigger mimetic desires. Spam, says Steyerl, “is an accurate portrayal of what humanity is actually not. It is a negative image.”[10] If spam was more than a marketing ploy and could be considered a form of ‘representation’ with a referent, then her interpretation of it as a negative indicates a mass-desertion of this type of ‘representation’ by anyone who is not (as Steyerl would have it) obscenely thin, horny, or with white enough teeth.
But is it a breach of contract to abandon mass media and surveillance (both institution/militarized surveillance and mutual mass-surveillance)? Both these zones of ‘representation’ are as ideologically and economically driven as spam. They are rarely individual political actions and have few true referents. The images we post on social media platforms are highly edited. They are post-produced, filtered, re-contextualized and re-posted. For the most part they become hyperbolic, narcissistic emoticons[11] of the people we wish we were, like avatars in a happier digital reality. Additionally, in mainstream media extreme political stress is placed on how or why events are ‘represented’ that many people are strategically left out, or given no rights in the accessibility of their own image. “On the one hand, there is a huge number of images without referent; on the other, many people without representation.”[12] If Ariella Azoulay’s claims – that the participants of photography constitute a citizenry – can be extended to all mediums of ‘representation’, then the space between images without referent and people without representation is one of exception, a citizenship akin to the zone of indistinction described by Giorgio Agamben in his text Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.[13]
Agamben defines a zone of indistinction as a bare life, a state of being commonly applied to those who are invisible, who are subject to the punishments of law but with no recourse to their benefits or defenses. Ariella Azoulay defines a similar state through the citizenship of photography in which a photographer’s attempt to create space from power and law, also produces an object that is subject to abuse by power. Conversely, perhaps paradoxically, in a zone of indistinction predicated on ‘representation’, in a world where “resolution determines visibility,”[14] images that are not economically driven are denied legitimacy or protective law, their subjects and authors denied visibility, and the images subjected to greater political forces or punishment.
In a post-Baudrillard[15] world, images are no longer a simulation of reality; rather, they are fully integrated as objects in their own rights. Steyerl posits that it is for this reason that images can be violent and receive violence in return. In her essay on the poor image, she personifies images, comparing splicing and manipulating to political violence of interrogation and probing. If images (even digital ones) have lives subject to the bruising of politics and history, then the contexts they are placed in are not only affected by subsequent interpretations, but also by their physical presence. Steyerl extends this argument in her essay A Thing Like You and Me[16] in 2010 on the basis of the image not as ‘representation’ inviting identification and subjectivity, but instead as objects inviting participation and objectification.
Traditionally, being ‘represented’ involved becoming the subject of an image, thus given the opportunity for emancipation and autonomy. However, Steyerl understands the position of the subject as subjected to power relations. To be subject to power relations means to be subjected to the whim of sovereignty or ideology, and if autonomy means to occupy a position outside of sovereignty and ownership, then to be a subject is not an emancipatory position. Identification and empathy with a subject inspires nothing but a passive struggle against ‘representation’[17] whereas participation with an object inspires action. To interact (participate) with an image as a piece of the world and not just as representing the world means to allow it to occupy a position, granting it autonomy. “How about siding with the object for a change? Why not affirm it? Why not be a thing? An object without a subject? A thing among other things?”[18] she asks.[19] Because an object accrues not only productive forces, but it also receives the violent scars of its various uses. But to accept this and become an object through the medium of ‘representation’ allows us to participate in the medium’s political potential. Therefore, Steyerl concludes: it is not useful to consider objects alone as outside of ownership or ideology (because objects don’t exist without owners and paradoxically almost nothing escapes ideology). It is collectively occupation through the objects as cushions for strong political positions, and the occupation of creating of these objects that distance the participant from sovereignty. Under these conditions, to withdraw from ‘representation’ means to remain a subject, to lose autonomy. It means to withdraw from the facilitation and occupation of political action.
The civil contract of ‘representation’ like that of photography is one of occupation. In other words, constantly exercising your right to represent is both an occupation of production and a way to occupy a political space so as to subvert sovereignty. However, this definition of the word occupation (constant subversion, and creating space from sovereignty) like photography belongs to the zone of indistinction, which we may call instead a zone of occupation. In her essay Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life[20] from 2011, Steyerl explores the various meanings of the word occupation including increasingly processed based artistic practices, internships and military occupation to name a few. The question that seems to be the basis of her military comparison is: what is the difference between occupying an autonomous position within a zone of indistinction, and military occupation? If both are political positions, is the question about the essential difference between autonomy and sovereignty?
Military or sovereign occupation is easier to define than autonomous occupation. Military occupation is one of seizure, conquest and invasion, “the objective is often expansion, but also neutralization, stranglehold, and the quelling of autonomy.”[21] Autonomous occupation on the other hand, is much more complicated although there are mimetic similarities. Originally, artistic autonomy was predicated on a practice quite separate from everyday life, but as artistic processes distance artists from private and public art markets (much like photography distances its citizens from power), process becomes inseparable from life.[22] And the further removed we are from a sovereign ideology, the closer we come to autonomy. Photography as a process is a process of occupation, it disallows invasion from economic and political agendas and is therefore autonomous in its distancing from power. And if ‘representation’ as a process of becoming object occupies a similar position (distancing itself from sovereign subjectivity), then both the process of ‘representation’ and its objectification are means for autonomy. Additionally, the civil contract of ‘representation’ as a process of occupation must be extended to include the process of contextualizing the objects it produces.
It may be a breach of contract to withdraw from ‘representation’ where it promises participation and citizenry but a mass exodus from a ‘representation’ without a referent can hardly be considered a breaking of social contract. The benefits of spam’s promises for recession-proof degrees and pills that ‘melt fat’ or ‘cure depression’ are only experienced by its models, posing as graduates and doctors in the ever-circulating world of spam. In Steyerl’s essay The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation from 2012,[9] she suggests a naïveté in assuming that the nature of spam is only in its capacity to trigger mimetic desires. Spam, says Steyerl, “is an accurate portrayal of what humanity is actually not. It is a negative image.”[10] If spam was more than a marketing ploy and could be considered a form of ‘representation’ with a referent, then her interpretation of it as a negative indicates a mass-desertion of this type of ‘representation’ by anyone who is not (as Steyerl would have it) obscenely thin, horny, or with white enough teeth.
But is it a breach of contract to abandon mass media and surveillance (both institution/militarized surveillance and mutual mass-surveillance)? Both these zones of ‘representation’ are as ideologically and economically driven as spam. They are rarely individual political actions and have few true referents. The images we post on social media platforms are highly edited. They are post-produced, filtered, re-contextualized and re-posted. For the most part they become hyperbolic, narcissistic emoticons[11] of the people we wish we were, like avatars in a happier digital reality. Additionally, in mainstream media extreme political stress is placed on how or why events are ‘represented’ that many people are strategically left out, or given no rights in the accessibility of their own image. “On the one hand, there is a huge number of images without referent; on the other, many people without representation.”[12] If Ariella Azoulay’s claims – that the participants of photography constitute a citizenry – can be extended to all mediums of ‘representation’, then the space between images without referent and people without representation is one of exception, a citizenship akin to the zone of indistinction described by Giorgio Agamben in his text Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.[13]
Agamben defines a zone of indistinction as a bare life, a state of being commonly applied to those who are invisible, who are subject to the punishments of law but with no recourse to their benefits or defenses. Ariella Azoulay defines a similar state through the citizenship of photography in which a photographer’s attempt to create space from power and law, also produces an object that is subject to abuse by power. Conversely, perhaps paradoxically, in a zone of indistinction predicated on ‘representation’, in a world where “resolution determines visibility,”[14] images that are not economically driven are denied legitimacy or protective law, their subjects and authors denied visibility, and the images subjected to greater political forces or punishment.
In a post-Baudrillard[15] world, images are no longer a simulation of reality; rather, they are fully integrated as objects in their own rights. Steyerl posits that it is for this reason that images can be violent and receive violence in return. In her essay on the poor image, she personifies images, comparing splicing and manipulating to political violence of interrogation and probing. If images (even digital ones) have lives subject to the bruising of politics and history, then the contexts they are placed in are not only affected by subsequent interpretations, but also by their physical presence. Steyerl extends this argument in her essay A Thing Like You and Me[16] in 2010 on the basis of the image not as ‘representation’ inviting identification and subjectivity, but instead as objects inviting participation and objectification.
Traditionally, being ‘represented’ involved becoming the subject of an image, thus given the opportunity for emancipation and autonomy. However, Steyerl understands the position of the subject as subjected to power relations. To be subject to power relations means to be subjected to the whim of sovereignty or ideology, and if autonomy means to occupy a position outside of sovereignty and ownership, then to be a subject is not an emancipatory position. Identification and empathy with a subject inspires nothing but a passive struggle against ‘representation’[17] whereas participation with an object inspires action. To interact (participate) with an image as a piece of the world and not just as representing the world means to allow it to occupy a position, granting it autonomy. “How about siding with the object for a change? Why not affirm it? Why not be a thing? An object without a subject? A thing among other things?”[18] she asks.[19] Because an object accrues not only productive forces, but it also receives the violent scars of its various uses. But to accept this and become an object through the medium of ‘representation’ allows us to participate in the medium’s political potential. Therefore, Steyerl concludes: it is not useful to consider objects alone as outside of ownership or ideology (because objects don’t exist without owners and paradoxically almost nothing escapes ideology). It is collectively occupation through the objects as cushions for strong political positions, and the occupation of creating of these objects that distance the participant from sovereignty. Under these conditions, to withdraw from ‘representation’ means to remain a subject, to lose autonomy. It means to withdraw from the facilitation and occupation of political action.
The civil contract of ‘representation’ like that of photography is one of occupation. In other words, constantly exercising your right to represent is both an occupation of production and a way to occupy a political space so as to subvert sovereignty. However, this definition of the word occupation (constant subversion, and creating space from sovereignty) like photography belongs to the zone of indistinction, which we may call instead a zone of occupation. In her essay Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life[20] from 2011, Steyerl explores the various meanings of the word occupation including increasingly processed based artistic practices, internships and military occupation to name a few. The question that seems to be the basis of her military comparison is: what is the difference between occupying an autonomous position within a zone of indistinction, and military occupation? If both are political positions, is the question about the essential difference between autonomy and sovereignty?
Military or sovereign occupation is easier to define than autonomous occupation. Military occupation is one of seizure, conquest and invasion, “the objective is often expansion, but also neutralization, stranglehold, and the quelling of autonomy.”[21] Autonomous occupation on the other hand, is much more complicated although there are mimetic similarities. Originally, artistic autonomy was predicated on a practice quite separate from everyday life, but as artistic processes distance artists from private and public art markets (much like photography distances its citizens from power), process becomes inseparable from life.[22] And the further removed we are from a sovereign ideology, the closer we come to autonomy. Photography as a process is a process of occupation, it disallows invasion from economic and political agendas and is therefore autonomous in its distancing from power. And if ‘representation’ as a process of becoming object occupies a similar position (distancing itself from sovereign subjectivity), then both the process of ‘representation’ and its objectification are means for autonomy. Additionally, the civil contract of ‘representation’ as a process of occupation must be extended to include the process of contextualizing the objects it produces.
Occupation through ‘representation’ as the medium becomes an object (a bullet) is precisely the goal of Steyerl’s work Is the Museum a Battlefield?. The video is a lecture given at the Istanbul Biennial in 2013 attempting to unravel the connections between museums, battlefields and the role ‘representation’ plays between the two. It is based on a two-screen video called Abstract she produced in 2012, in which she visits the battlefield in Turkey where her childhood friend Andrea Wolfe was supposedly extra-judicially executed as a member of the women’s faction of the PKK in 1998.[23] Steyerl attempts to trace the bullet of a 20mm ammunition case made by General Dynamics and fired from a Lockheed Martin Hellfire Gatling gun, and a 7.62mm case shot from a Heckler and Koch G3 riffle, back to the company’s headquarters, and finally, back to the person who originally fired the bullets. Throughout her lecture, tracing the trajectories of the bullets she weaves an intricate tale through popular culture, politics, gentrification, history and digital software teetering on the edge of paranoia. Ultimately, she finds herself not in front of a person or company, as you would imagine being responsible for shooting the bullet, instead she finds herself in the Art Institute of Chicago in front of her own work Abstract. She suspects that the reason for this rendez-vous is due to the museum’s connection to the founding family of General Dynamics.
To be more specific, Steyerl finds herself in front of Abstract, metonymically connecting the still “This is a shot” (a cinematic reference) in which she is holding an iPhone to the act of shooting a gun. She asks, “so did I shoot the bullet I found on the battlefield myself?”[24] In asking this, she asks us to consider the ‘representation’ of the bullet as the bullet itself. We are asked to reconsider the premise put forth by Magritte when he painted the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” beneath a painted pipe. In other words, we are asked to accept the fear of Baudrillard: that ‘representation’ is beyond a sign for reality, it is reality itself. Steyerl theorizes that the bullet is re-engaged in every context that the video captures and is subsequently placed in.
Steyerl then analyses the potential of the device through which she shot Abstract. By connecting the phone to drone attacks that made news over the past couple of years, she reminds us of the dangerous proliferation of military surveillance and the violent potential of mutual mass-surveillance. And, on a more light-hearted turn, she connects the phone to targeted, customized spam. Steyerl recounts a personal anecdote of a particularly metaphorical piece of spam. She claims that she had her phone pointed at the 7.62mm case on the battlefield when she received an e-flux invite to a show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London called Modern British Sculpture. Later, she found herself in front of the Royal Academy on her journey to follow the trajectory of the 7.62mm case because it was being sponsored and supported by the chairman of Heckler and Koch (the company that licenses these bullets internationally). Finally, she concludes that this series of connections transforms at least partly, the battlefield in Turkey into modern British Sculpture. Again, ‘representation’ transforms subjects into objects and in the right context, a battlefield into art (but not an art gallery into a battlefield where the bullet becomes an art object). These clips display a paranoia similar to conspiracy theory, but for good reason. It is precisely this level of anxiety about digital ‘representation’ with which we are faced when we consider its potential for violence and the guilt of withdrawing from it.
To be more specific, Steyerl finds herself in front of Abstract, metonymically connecting the still “This is a shot” (a cinematic reference) in which she is holding an iPhone to the act of shooting a gun. She asks, “so did I shoot the bullet I found on the battlefield myself?”[24] In asking this, she asks us to consider the ‘representation’ of the bullet as the bullet itself. We are asked to reconsider the premise put forth by Magritte when he painted the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” beneath a painted pipe. In other words, we are asked to accept the fear of Baudrillard: that ‘representation’ is beyond a sign for reality, it is reality itself. Steyerl theorizes that the bullet is re-engaged in every context that the video captures and is subsequently placed in.
Steyerl then analyses the potential of the device through which she shot Abstract. By connecting the phone to drone attacks that made news over the past couple of years, she reminds us of the dangerous proliferation of military surveillance and the violent potential of mutual mass-surveillance. And, on a more light-hearted turn, she connects the phone to targeted, customized spam. Steyerl recounts a personal anecdote of a particularly metaphorical piece of spam. She claims that she had her phone pointed at the 7.62mm case on the battlefield when she received an e-flux invite to a show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London called Modern British Sculpture. Later, she found herself in front of the Royal Academy on her journey to follow the trajectory of the 7.62mm case because it was being sponsored and supported by the chairman of Heckler and Koch (the company that licenses these bullets internationally). Finally, she concludes that this series of connections transforms at least partly, the battlefield in Turkey into modern British Sculpture. Again, ‘representation’ transforms subjects into objects and in the right context, a battlefield into art (but not an art gallery into a battlefield where the bullet becomes an art object). These clips display a paranoia similar to conspiracy theory, but for good reason. It is precisely this level of anxiety about digital ‘representation’ with which we are faced when we consider its potential for violence and the guilt of withdrawing from it.
The author Herman Melville, in his novella Bartleby the Scrivener, originally published in 1853, tells the story of a man who chooses to withdraw from representation and the anxieties his employer experiences in his wake. Bartleby is a copier in a small law office, and when asked one day to review a copy he had made, he politely states, “I would prefer not to.”[25] Bartleby repeats this answer for every task assigned to him until the owner of the law office is forced to move away, leaving Bartleby behind. Yet, he prefers not to move. He remains in the building until the new owners call the authorities to bring him away. Bartleby spends the rest of his days in an asylum ‘preferring’ not to eat until he wastes away. Steyerl might connect his demise to the hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay, or the wasting away of people who prescribe to weight loss spam. Bartleby intentionally withdrew from representation, those who succumb to the temptations of spam attempt to be their referents, and the inmates of Guantanamo Bay are denied representation. If all three of the aforementioned situations lead to invisibility, then what is the difference between them? The answer lies in Bartleby’s use of the word ‘prefer’ because to prefer means to like one option better than another without making any definitive commitment to your decision. He has the option to withdraw, but takes this option without concrete opposition. To continually prefer not to at every opportunity leads to a life of permanent displacement, one in which occupation of any position is not possible. To occupy a position, therefore, is political in nature in as much as it is oppositional – it is the same political occupation that is involved in denying authority with the goal of autonomy and participating in ‘representation’.
In the end of her video Is the Museum a Battlefield?, Steyerl proposes that through new mediums of ‘representation’ we can participate in a particular political position of opposition. She begins her proposal by identifying the force and determination necessary for occupation by describing the storming of the Louvre. The Louvre was originally a private museum until a bloody and recurring battle (beginning in 1792 over public access) was fought until finally it was burnt down and became the first public art museum in the world. The storming of the Louvre is a historically rich metaphor for a digital occupation as it equates the potential of ‘representation’ with a self-organized, public army (again, she incorporates the military into her work). Steyerl optimistically points out that there are increasing numbers of private institutions being built all over the world with the potential for public protest. But she says, “one needs to also storm the clouds that transform bullets into art spam and reality into realty.”[26] That is to say, if ‘representations’ are real objects in the world, then those digital objects have as much affect as the objects they represent and one should use these means for political occupation. Steyerl’s work does just that. It goes beyond institutional critique. Her work is a bullet with a very direct trajectory and purpose: to appear in every institution associated with its manufacturer. She intends to reverse the direction of the cloud bullet in the hopes of undoing its damage, or at least to occupy the position of opposition against a private, military authority.
The civil contract of ‘representation’ is not a simple public duty to maintain, and the many failings of ‘representation’ are not approached delicately in Steyerl’s prolific essays on the subject. The digital image may have “delivered gossip, surveillance, evidence, [and] serial narcissism,”[27] and participation in its production may be increasingly risky due to militarization of our means of ‘representation’, but she does not completely dismiss the benefits of participation, nor does she condemn the right to withdraw from it completely. In an interview with Jennifer Thatcher, Steyerl is poignant about her role in providing answers to questions such as, is there a way to participate in digital ‘representation’ without breaking the social contract or withdrawing form it? She states that her role is not to provide answers. But in her work Is the Museum a Battlefield?, she does just that. Steyerl proposes that by putting ‘representations’ of ourselves online, we are occupying digital space as objects, and that by posting and re-posting the equivalent to her bullet (whether it be important articles or genuine insight), we are engaging in the autonomous civil contract of ‘representation’.
In the end of her video Is the Museum a Battlefield?, Steyerl proposes that through new mediums of ‘representation’ we can participate in a particular political position of opposition. She begins her proposal by identifying the force and determination necessary for occupation by describing the storming of the Louvre. The Louvre was originally a private museum until a bloody and recurring battle (beginning in 1792 over public access) was fought until finally it was burnt down and became the first public art museum in the world. The storming of the Louvre is a historically rich metaphor for a digital occupation as it equates the potential of ‘representation’ with a self-organized, public army (again, she incorporates the military into her work). Steyerl optimistically points out that there are increasing numbers of private institutions being built all over the world with the potential for public protest. But she says, “one needs to also storm the clouds that transform bullets into art spam and reality into realty.”[26] That is to say, if ‘representations’ are real objects in the world, then those digital objects have as much affect as the objects they represent and one should use these means for political occupation. Steyerl’s work does just that. It goes beyond institutional critique. Her work is a bullet with a very direct trajectory and purpose: to appear in every institution associated with its manufacturer. She intends to reverse the direction of the cloud bullet in the hopes of undoing its damage, or at least to occupy the position of opposition against a private, military authority.
The civil contract of ‘representation’ is not a simple public duty to maintain, and the many failings of ‘representation’ are not approached delicately in Steyerl’s prolific essays on the subject. The digital image may have “delivered gossip, surveillance, evidence, [and] serial narcissism,”[27] and participation in its production may be increasingly risky due to militarization of our means of ‘representation’, but she does not completely dismiss the benefits of participation, nor does she condemn the right to withdraw from it completely. In an interview with Jennifer Thatcher, Steyerl is poignant about her role in providing answers to questions such as, is there a way to participate in digital ‘representation’ without breaking the social contract or withdrawing form it? She states that her role is not to provide answers. But in her work Is the Museum a Battlefield?, she does just that. Steyerl proposes that by putting ‘representations’ of ourselves online, we are occupying digital space as objects, and that by posting and re-posting the equivalent to her bullet (whether it be important articles or genuine insight), we are engaging in the autonomous civil contract of ‘representation’.
[1] HITO STEYERL, “THE SPAM OF THE EARTH: WITHDRAWAL FROM REPRESENTATION,” E-FLUX JOURNAL, NO. 32 (FEBRUARY 2012) NO PAGE.
[2] Representation is placed in inverted commas throughout this essay for two reasons. First, it is used to refer to a multiplicity of modes of representation, and through many different means. It is in reference to photography, social media, video, film in its digital and analogue forms. Second, inverted commas are used because representations are to be considered not only as images, but also as objects (not only signs for the world, but a piece of the world itself).
[3] Steyerl’s writing often makes use of metaphors or puns available through the language of digital interfaces such as spam and clouds. Many of the themes in her essays such as images becoming objects, spam and the circulation of poor quality images are explored in her video works, but she never intended for them to work together. She did not intend for her essays to be explanations for her work, but together they reveal the circular nature of ‘representation’.
[4] Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image,” e-flux journal, no. 10 (November 2009).
[5] Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone Books, 2008).
[6] Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone Books, 2008) p. 85.
There is debate about the official inventor of photography (decidedly Daguerre), but soon after its invention, France declared that photography should be a public right.
[7] ARIELLA AZOULAY, THE CIVIL CONTRACT OF PHOTOGRAPHY, TRANS. RELA MAZALI AND RUVIK DANIELI (NEW YORK: ZONE BOOKS, 2008) P. 104.
[8] Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone Books, 2008) p. 105.
[9] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012).
[10] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012) no page.
[11] Emoticons are signs formed with various combinations of keyboard symbols that represent facial expressions and are used in electronic communication to convey a tone.
[12] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012) no page.
[13] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian: Crossing
Aesthetics), trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Chicago: Stanford University Press, 1998).
[14] How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
[15] Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations (The MIT Press, 1983).
Baudrillard forsaw the day when reality would depart from the ‘real’ and take root in ‘representation’ – a theory that he examined through the Las Vegas strip and Disney World.
[16] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010).
[17] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010) no page.
The struggle of ‘representation’ is best characterized by Magritte: signs have referents, but cannot be objects themselves.
[18] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010) no page.
[19] In her essay A Thing Like You and Me, Steyerl also explores the problem of becoming an object form the feminist perspective, but proposes rather contentiously that becoming an object might be a positive approach to the feminist manifesto.
[20] Hito Steyerl, “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life,” e-flux journal, no. 30 (December 2011).
[21] Steyerl, Hito. “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life.” e-flux journal, no. 30 (December 2011) no page.
[22] Steyerl, Hito. “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life.” e-flux journal, no. 30 (December 2011) no page.
[23] Andrea Wolfe is a person that is often incorporated in Steyerl’s works. In November, she is the star of the video, and her name appears in Lovely Andrea. It is in Is the Museum a Battlefield? where her death and real life are tackled as a narrative theme.
[24] Is The Museum a Battlefield?, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
[25] Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (Brooklyn, New York: Melville House, 2010) p. 17.
[26] Is The Museum a Battlefield?, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
[27] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012) no page.
[2] Representation is placed in inverted commas throughout this essay for two reasons. First, it is used to refer to a multiplicity of modes of representation, and through many different means. It is in reference to photography, social media, video, film in its digital and analogue forms. Second, inverted commas are used because representations are to be considered not only as images, but also as objects (not only signs for the world, but a piece of the world itself).
[3] Steyerl’s writing often makes use of metaphors or puns available through the language of digital interfaces such as spam and clouds. Many of the themes in her essays such as images becoming objects, spam and the circulation of poor quality images are explored in her video works, but she never intended for them to work together. She did not intend for her essays to be explanations for her work, but together they reveal the circular nature of ‘representation’.
[4] Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image,” e-flux journal, no. 10 (November 2009).
[5] Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone Books, 2008).
[6] Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone Books, 2008) p. 85.
There is debate about the official inventor of photography (decidedly Daguerre), but soon after its invention, France declared that photography should be a public right.
[7] ARIELLA AZOULAY, THE CIVIL CONTRACT OF PHOTOGRAPHY, TRANS. RELA MAZALI AND RUVIK DANIELI (NEW YORK: ZONE BOOKS, 2008) P. 104.
[8] Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography, trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone Books, 2008) p. 105.
[9] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012).
[10] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012) no page.
[11] Emoticons are signs formed with various combinations of keyboard symbols that represent facial expressions and are used in electronic communication to convey a tone.
[12] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012) no page.
[13] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian: Crossing
Aesthetics), trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Chicago: Stanford University Press, 1998).
[14] How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
[15] Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations (The MIT Press, 1983).
Baudrillard forsaw the day when reality would depart from the ‘real’ and take root in ‘representation’ – a theory that he examined through the Las Vegas strip and Disney World.
[16] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010).
[17] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010) no page.
The struggle of ‘representation’ is best characterized by Magritte: signs have referents, but cannot be objects themselves.
[18] Hito Steyerl, “A Thing Like You and Me,” e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010) no page.
[19] In her essay A Thing Like You and Me, Steyerl also explores the problem of becoming an object form the feminist perspective, but proposes rather contentiously that becoming an object might be a positive approach to the feminist manifesto.
[20] Hito Steyerl, “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life,” e-flux journal, no. 30 (December 2011).
[21] Steyerl, Hito. “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life.” e-flux journal, no. 30 (December 2011) no page.
[22] Steyerl, Hito. “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life.” e-flux journal, no. 30 (December 2011) no page.
[23] Andrea Wolfe is a person that is often incorporated in Steyerl’s works. In November, she is the star of the video, and her name appears in Lovely Andrea. It is in Is the Museum a Battlefield? where her death and real life are tackled as a narrative theme.
[24] Is The Museum a Battlefield?, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
[25] Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener (Brooklyn, New York: Melville House, 2010) p. 17.
[26] Is The Museum a Battlefield?, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
[27] Hito Steyerl, “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation,” e-flux journal, no. 32 (February 2012) no page.
Bibliography
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Daniel Heller-Roazen (Chicago: Stanford University Press, 1998).
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Books, 2008).
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations (The MIT Press, 1983).
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. trans. J.A. Underwood
(London: Penguin, 2008).
Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Selected Writings, Vol. 4: 1938-1940, trans. By Harry Zohn
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) pp. 392-393.
Clemens, Justin Heron, and Alex Nicholas Murray. Work of Giorgio Agamben: Law, Literature, Life
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Steyerl, Hito. “In Defense of the Poor Image.” e-flux journal, no. 10 (November 2009).
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Steyerl, Hito. “Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-
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Steyerl, Hito. “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective.” e-flux
journal, no. 24 (April 2011).
Steyerl, Hito. “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life.” e-flux journal, no.
30 (December 2011).
Steyerl, Hito. “Digital Debris: Spam and Scam.” October, no. 138 (Fall 2011), pp. 70-
80.
Steyerl, Hito. “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation.” e-flux
journal, no. 32 (February 2012).
Steyerl, Hito. “Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?” e-flux journal, no. 49
(November, 2013).
Steyerl, Hito. Esther Shub films introduced by writer Hito Steyerl (2013)
<http://vimeo.com/51055818 > [accessed April 28, 2014].
Is The Museum a Battlefield?, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed
on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, written and directed
by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
Thatcher, Jennifer and Hito Steyerl. “No Solution.” Art Monthly, no. 375 (April 2014).
Verwoert, Jan. “I Can, I Can’t, Who Cares?” A Precarious Existence, no. 17 (Open
2009) pp. 40-45.
Walker Art Centre. Artist Talk: Liam Gillick & Hito Steyerl (26 October, 2013) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IahCgTk98gE> [accessed April 29, 2014] Ed. by Julian Stallabrass. Documentary (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2013).
Digital Visual Culture: Theory and Practice. Ed. by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, Trish
Cashen and Hazel Gardiner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics). trans.
Daniel Heller-Roazen (Chicago: Stanford University Press, 1998).
Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography. trans. Rela Mazali and Ruvik Danieli (New York: Zone
Books, 2008).
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations (The MIT Press, 1983).
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. trans. J.A. Underwood
(London: Penguin, 2008).
Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Selected Writings, Vol. 4: 1938-1940, trans. By Harry Zohn
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) pp. 392-393.
Clemens, Justin Heron, and Alex Nicholas Murray. Work of Giorgio Agamben: Law, Literature, Life
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
Demos, T J. “Traveling Images.” Artforum International, no. 46.10 (Summer 2008) pp. 409-410, 412, 473.
Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” Trans. By Jay Miskowiec.
Architecture/Mouvement/Continuite, October, 1984).
Groys, Boris. “Politics of Installation.” e-flux journal, no. 2 (January 2009).
Institute of Contemporary Arts. Hito Steyerl in Conversation with Nina Power, London (March 28, 2014)<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoqHQ05J22k > [accessed April 28, 2014].
Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener (Brooklyn, New York: Melville House, 2010).
Osborne, Peter. Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London and New York: Verso,
2013).
Rourke, Daniel. “Falling Into the Digital Divide: Encounters with the Work of Hito Steyerl.” Afterimage, no.
40.5 (March/April 2013) pp. 19-22.
Sekula, Allan. “Reading an Archive: Photography between labour and capital.” The Photography Reader.
Ed. by Liz Wells (London, New York: Routledge, 2002) pp. 445-452.
Smithson, Robert. “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.” Blasted Allegories, ed. by
Brian Wallis (London: The MIT Press and The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1987)
pp. 74-81.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
Stakemeier, Kerstin. “Minor Findings and Major Tendencies.” Afterall, no. 19
(Autumn/Winter, 2008) pp. 54-63.
Steyerl, Hito. “Is a Museum a Factory?” e-flux journal, no. 7 (June-August 2009).
Steyerl, Hito. “In Defense of the Poor Image.” e-flux journal, no. 10 (November 2009).
Steyerl, Hito. “A Thing Like You and Me.” e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010).
Steyerl, Hito. “Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-
Democracy.” e-flux journal, no. 21 (December 2010).
Steyerl, Hito. “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective.” e-flux
journal, no. 24 (April 2011).
Steyerl, Hito. “Art as Occupation: Claims for an Autonomy of Life.” e-flux journal, no.
30 (December 2011).
Steyerl, Hito. “Digital Debris: Spam and Scam.” October, no. 138 (Fall 2011), pp. 70-
80.
Steyerl, Hito. “The Spam of the Earth: Withdrawal from Representation.” e-flux
journal, no. 32 (February 2012).
Steyerl, Hito. “Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?” e-flux journal, no. 49
(November, 2013).
Steyerl, Hito. Esther Shub films introduced by writer Hito Steyerl (2013)
<http://vimeo.com/51055818 > [accessed April 28, 2014].
Is The Museum a Battlefield?, written and directed by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed
on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, written and directed
by Hito Steyerl, (2013) [accessed on Vimeo, April 27, 2014].
Thatcher, Jennifer and Hito Steyerl. “No Solution.” Art Monthly, no. 375 (April 2014).
Verwoert, Jan. “I Can, I Can’t, Who Cares?” A Precarious Existence, no. 17 (Open
2009) pp. 40-45.
Walker Art Centre. Artist Talk: Liam Gillick & Hito Steyerl (26 October, 2013) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IahCgTk98gE> [accessed April 29, 2014] Ed. by Julian Stallabrass. Documentary (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2013).
Digital Visual Culture: Theory and Practice. Ed. by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel, Trish
Cashen and Hazel Gardiner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009).