BERLIN — Blurry selfies, pixelated screen shots,

Photoshop disasters: Low-quality, mass-repro-

duced pictures flood our screens every day. They
are easy to dismiss, but the German artist Hito
Steyerl makes a case for their value.
“They spread pleasure or death threats, conspira-
cy theories or bootlegs, resistance or stultifica-
tion,” she wrote in her 2009 essay “In Defense of
the Poor Image.” “Poor images show the rare, the
obvious and the unbelievable.” They can show us
secrets, she says, if only we’re willing to look.
In her films, lectures and essays, Ms. Steyerl, 51,
has never shied from revealing the secrets she
uncovers. She illuminates the world’s power
structures, inequalities, obscurities and delights.
She pushes buttons as she spins parables.

Her work has never been more recognized or rele-

vant: This year she became the first female artist
to top the British magazine ArtReview’s Power 100
list; her “Liquidity Inc.” show opened on Dec. 13
at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, where
it runs through April 22; and her newest essay col-
lection, “Duty-Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary
Civil War” was published in October. She repre-
sents a new paradigm of the artist not as solitary
genius but as networked thinker.
Image
Ms. Steyerl’s “Liquidity Inc.” uses computer-generated graphics to
tell a parable of economic collapse.
Credit...
Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
Ms. Steyerl’s films are densely packed, mixing fact
and fiction, documentary footage, computer-gen-
erated images and often appearances by the artist
herself. They zoom in on, and pan out from, some
of the most complex, pressing issues of our time
— among them surveillance, alienated labor, mili-
tarization, protest culture, corporate domination
and the rise of alternative economies.

But the films’ politics are served up with appeal-

ing, accessible pop-culture aesthetics, sardonic
humor and the odd four-letter word. Viewers have
stood in long lines at venues like the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles or the German
pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale to enter Ms.
Steyerl’s installations, which present the films in
environments that might look like a giant wave or
the blue lines from the 1982 movie “Tron.” Visitors
might leave pondering exploitation, dancing to a
disco tune from the soundtrack, or both.

“In my films, accessibility is something I do on

purpose,” said Ms. Steyerl (pronounced SHTYE-
earl), speaking in measured English sentences in
a cafe in the Kreuzberg district here. When not
lecturing to packed audiences or teaching media
art at this city’s University of Arts, she works from
her home nearby. “I don’t want to make films that
are so specialized that they’re only accessible to
people with prior knowledge or histories or refer-
ences.” The films always, she explained, have one
layer that anyone can understand.

Ms. Steyerl’s “Factory of the Sun” was displayed in the German

Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.
Credit...
Manuel Reinartz, via Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
Ms. Steyerl’s influences range from Godard, New
German Cinema and the work of the experimental
filmmaker Harun Farocki, to martial arts flicks and
Monty Python. References swing from Bruce Lee
to the Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor W.
Adorno. (Ms. Steyerl earned a Ph.D. in philosophy
from the University of Vienna in 2003.)
“It’s hard to imagine aesthetics in contemporary
art without her,” said Alexander Koch, co-owner of
the gallery K.O.W., which shows Ms. Steyerl’s
works here. “She has found a visual language that
can combine so many cultures, especially digital
ones.”
Beyond the films are Ms. Steyerl’s writings and
her “lecture performances,” which are famously
hypnotic. Delivered in a yoga teacher’s or Jedi
master’s slow, soothing voice, her speeches
weave disparate ideas together. “She’s a legend
onstage,” Mr. Koch said. “She’s the one who made
a lecture performance into an aesthetic event.
They’re sometimes sublime. She transcends her
material.”
And there’s something almost digital about read-
ing her essays, many of which evolve from her
talks. The writing seems almost as if it were tog-
gling among browser tabs.
“Hito’s writing is stylistically very different than
that of an academic or a journalist — there are jux-
tapositions and allegories that go far beyond the
usual range of writing,” said the American artist
Trevor Paglen, a longtime friend whose art also
explores information flows and power structures.

Steyerlisms like “circulationism” (the more an im-

age moves through the digital or real world, the
more power it accrues), or “junktime” (the frag-
mented, distracted experience of the harried free-
lancer) fascinate undergrads and professors alike.
Ms. Steyerl explained the concept in her new
book’s title. On the one hand, “duty-free art” can
refer to art in “free ports,” tax-free storage facili-
ties in places like Switzerland or Singapore: “non-
descript and pedestrian buildings in the suburbs,
where a lot of art would accumulate without being
seen,” she said.
“But duty-free art,” she continued, “could also be
art that’s not subject to the duty of having to rep-
resent either a culture of a nation or some other
interests involved in presentation and
production.” Does she mean the avant-garde
dream of truly autonomous art? “There’s no com-
plete autonomy — you can only even start think-
ing about autonomy in relation to other things,”
Ms. Steyerl said.
Many of the book’s essays were previously pub-
lished in e-flux journal, a theory periodical pub-
lished by the art website e-flux. “There’s an in-
credibly close relationship between Hito and the
journal,” said the site’s co-founder Julieta Aranda,
who explained how the intellectual discussions of
a group of like-minded Berliners, including Ms.
Steyerl, led to the journal’s founding in 2008.
“In Defense of the Poor Image” became an instant
classic in art theory circles. “Her previous texts
don’t become dated; her ideas keep circulating,”
Ms. Aranda said. “People take her work and build
upon it. And she’s not afraid of the truth of her
time. That’s important for generations that come
after her.”
As broad as Ms. Steyerl’s practice is, she sees
herself first and foremost as a filmmaker. Born
and raised in Munich, she trained as a camera op-
erator, then studied filmmaking in both Japan and
her hometown. In the late 1980s, she worked as an
assistant to the German director Wim Wenders.
She intended to become a classical documentary
filmmaker, but things didn’t quite work out that
way.

“While I was at film school, or even earlier, maybe

the late 1980s, the market for independent-film
production collapsed, and existing funding for
long-form documentaries just stopped,” said Ms.
Steyerl, whose work found its way into the art
world in 1999 when she had her first exhibition in
Vienna. By 2004, her films were on view in major
shows like the roving Manifesta biennial of Eu-
ropean contemporary art and the fourth Berlin Bi-
ennale, and at Artists Space in New York. In 2013
she began showing with Andrew Kreps Gallery in
New York; her work sells primarily to contempo-
rary-art institutions. She finances her films with
commissions, prize money and her own funds.
According to Mr. Koch, part of this artist’s appeal
is her integrity. “She has complete loyalty to her
ethical positions,” he said. “She is the personifi-
cation of her work.” It is perhaps odd, then, that
Ms. Steyerl took the No. 1 spot on ArtReview’s
Power 100 list. “I had no idea whatsoever that this
would happen,” she said. “Of course there’s a lot
of attention. It’s not focused on my work, so it’s
not helpful. So I’m trying not to engage with it.”
Then again, it might be a sign of changing times,
in which artists dare to challenge the industry that
now surrounds their work. Ms. Steyerl does use
her clout to demand action: In September, after
discovering belatedly that a German weapons
manufacturer was sponsoring a group exhibition,
“Deutschland 8, German Art in China,” in which
her work was included, she led an artists’ protest.
“I wouldn’t associate her work with power, but in-
fluence,” Ms. Aranda said. “She speaks truth to
power.”
In the Kreuzberg cafe, Ms. Steyerl discussed
world politics and changing contemporary condi-
tions. We might either become so addicted to the
web that we lose track of the material world, or we
will “just get bored and log off,” she said. The art
scene is also shifting. “A few strands are slowly
forming, pulling into different directions,” she
said. “One is heavily involved in fashion and
branding. Then there’s a noncommercial section
of art. Those paths will grow apart even more in
the next couple of years.”
Is this good or bad? “I’m always an optimist,” said
Ms. Steyerl, whose even most critical works con-
tain glimmers of hope. “In Danis Tanovic´s 2001
film, ‘No Man’s Land,’ two guys are sitting in a
minefield. One says, if you’re a pessimist in these
times, you think things are as bad as they could
be. If you’re an optimist, you think things could
still get much worse!” she said, bursting into
laughter.
For all the accolades and recent ubiquity — or
claims, in some circles, that she takes advantage
of the very system she critiques — Ms. Steyerl is
refreshingly humble. She is also inquisitive, punc-
tual, quick to respond to emails, and married with
a 12-year-old daughter. She was even uncomplain-
ingly game for walking through mud in her trade-
mark hot-pink sneakers to be photographed.
“I don’t think the internet or a big digital corpora-
tion will manage to capture all of human relations.
It’s too boring,” she said. “After a while, people
want to talk to one another, one on one.”