Could dancing save the world? German artist Hito Steyerl uses a montage of dancing figures and other images — protests, simulated realities, 3D models of lightbulbs smashing into a million tiny fragments – as symbols of how we live and what we’re turning into, before we experience the complete digitisation of our everyday lives.
First featured in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015, Hito Steyerl's 'Factory of the Sun' was bought by the National Gallery of Victoria in 2016. It’s a huge (read: room-sized) installation that immerses viewers in an environment akin to the movie TRON, replete with poolside deck chairs and a 23-minute film. It's being installed at the NGV for the first time in September, and you can visit it for free over summer.
The environment is itself a type of alternative reality – you’re not in a cinema and you’re not in the gallery, but you’re in an environment that triggers your brain to think in sci-fi. And you’re in there for real. It’s not a simulation; your body is physically existing within those four walls. You’re breathing, and blood is flowing through your veins, but you’re in what you might recognise as a computer game. The screen is propped up on temporary scaffolding, giving it the effect of being a stage.
In 2009, Steyerl wrote ‘Is A Museum a Factory?’. In that essay, she says that the screen – and cinema itself – is isolated and automated in the sanctified space of the museum; it's no longer experienced with people. She argues that cinema, the screen that people used to gather around, has now been replaced by a more commercial version of itself (sequels, Netflix, blockbuster after blockbuster). Only political films are given any reverence in front of larger audiences, but they’re in museums, rather than your local Hoyts.
Steyerl's film mashes together documentary film, advertising, video games, anime, news footage, drone surveillance, and dance videos.
It tells the story of workers in a labour camp who are forced to dance. When they dance, they produce artificial sunshine (we all know Melbourne could use a little more Vitamin D). The artificial sunshine that these dancer-workers are striving for is a metaphor for the ways our everyday lives are being digitised; how we're not allowed emotion and must be devoid of opinion.
The installation is also apparently influenced by a quote from Donna Haraway’s essay 'A Cyborg Manifesto': “our machines are made of pure sunlight”. Haraway’s essay, written in 1985, argues for a culture in which humans transcend identity and organise by affinity instead. The dancers in the video are all expressionless; not permitted emotion beyond a single token kiss to the camera at the end.
There’s an exciting twist at the end of the video, but you need to go see it for yourself. There are no spoiler alerts for dragging yourself away from Netflix and experiencing this in real life. The dancers continue dancing, while we're becoming digital versions of ourselves. Can dancing save our world? Go see for yourself.