Hito Steyerl – How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013)

Artist: Hito Steyerl
Artwork: How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File
Year: 2013

Hito Steyerl is a contemporary media artist whose work explores digital images, surveillance, and the blurred boundaries between reality and virtuality. How Not to Be Seen is a satirical instructional video addressing invisibility and camouflage in the digital age, critically examining how visibility relates to power and control.

This piece raises questions about the body’s presence under constant observation, and how identity is negotiated within social and political frameworks mediated by technology.

My works explore the act of marking the body as a means of revealing and reconstructing personal identity, memory, and psychological states. Steyerl’s exploration of visibility and invisibility parallels the tension in my practice between the body’s visibility and privacy, individual narrative, and societal gaze.

Her use of digital media and installation inspires me to think about the intersections of body and image, reality and virtual, private and public. This aligns with my own incorporation of AR, digital illustration, and interactive elements to question how bodies and marks exist in mediated spaces.

Steyerl’s work challenges ideas of visibility and identity in the digital age, encouraging me to consider how bodies and marks—like tattoos—navigate the tension between private experience and public gaze in a mediated world.

#digitalart #visibility #identity #surveillance #mediaart #contemporaryart #bodilypolitics