Hito Steyerl: Medya and Kassem Mosse: Combat Zones That See

Floor Three, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

In this lecture-performance, Hito Steyerl lays out fragments of texts, ideas, and images to consider contemporary visual blindness and contemporary war. She cites Harun Farocki’s idea, developed in his film Eye-Machine (2002), of suicide cameras, devices that are fitted into missiles, home in on the target, collide with it and continue to broadcast images after the explosion. In Steyerl’s eyes, these cameras have mushroomed across the millions of lenses installed in mobile phones, zombie cameras, multiplied and incorporated into the owners’ movements and emotions.  

As a counterpoint to Steyerl’s meditation, a sound environment by artist Kassem Mosse collages real, transmitted, and fictional sounds with music. The choice of material avoids the sensational and the sounds of industrialized combat in favor of consumer technologies in war time: the soft crackle of fire, the sound of money transfers, the low whirring of hard drives filled with video footage, the tweet from a cellphone on the front lines, the rustle of plastic blowing in the wind, rubber soles stepping on ashes, the soft noise of camera lenses zooming in on distant shapes and figures, and the digital artifacts of skype conversations.

This event is part of a series of public events, lectures, and talks organized in tandem with ​Laura Poitras: Astro Noise​.

Event tickets are required ($10 adults; $8 members; students and seniors). Please note: This event has reached ticketing capacity. A limited number of standby tickets may be available at the admissions desk on a first-come, first-served basis. The standby line will open one hour prior to the program's start time.