Communication, Power and Ethics Koki Tanaka

Koki Tanaka, born 1975 in Tochigi, Japan, lives and works in Los Angeles. He became known through his installations and actions, in which he implements everyday objects and material found on site. A major part of his work consists of participatory projects that incorporate actors and exhibition viewers. Tanaka is concerned with communication, power, and ethics, as well as with the aesthetic and form of the collaboratively produced work of art. He uses locally sourced and quotidian objects to demonstrate alternatives to the everyday and explore the fortuities of choice. His process, deeply influenced by those of Peter Fischli and David Weiss, and Bruce Nauman, consists of periods of gathering and then assembling. In Tanaka’s own words: “the act of art is editing.” His early works were based on Tanaka’s preoccupation with the form and implications of a loop; in later works, he has begun to present everyday items and actions in counterintuitive ways. Tanaka’s recent projects have included performances in which he receives a haircut by nine hairdressers at the same time, or invents overly complicated ways to complete simple tasks like entering a house or a car.

The status of art production Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl was born 1966 in Munich. She’s a German filmmaker, visual artist, writer, and innovator of the essay documentary. Her principal topics of interest are media, technology, and the global circulation of images. With a PhD in Philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, she is currently a professor of New Media Art at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she co-founded the Research Center for Proxy Politics, together with Vera Tollmann and Boaz Levin. Through her writing practice, films, and performative lectures, Hito Steyerl considers the status of the image in an increasingly global and technological world. Steyerl’s work, which has been presented at the Venice Biennale, is part of a lineage that includes Harun Farocki and Chris Marker, blending aspects of documentary with the film essay to explore globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production. A particular theme of the Berlin-based artist’s work is the proliferation of images and how they inscribe and affect economy and culture on both a macro and micro scale. “Images do not represent reality, they create reality, they are second nature,” Steyerl has said.

Hito Steyerl, still from Liquidity Inc., 2014, HD video, 30 mins. Courtesy the artist.

Hito Steyerl, still from Liquidity Inc., 2014, HD video, 30 mins. Courtesy the artist.