iDeichtorhallen Hamburg - Halle für aktuelle KunstAltstadt
About eight room-scale installations from 1999 to 2025 on algorithmic control, war and climate, including the film The Island, shown in Germany for the first time.
In one room, Hito Steyerl teaches you how to disappear. Her 2013 video How Not To Be Seen is a deadpan instruction film on hiding from cameras in a world where everything is photographed, and it runs just under 16 minutes in a set built around it.
That piece is one of around eight room installations made between 1999 and 2025, spread across the whole Halle für aktuelle Kunst. The hall is split into a bright zone and a dimmed one. The newer work turns to drones, AI, climate and war: Mechanical Kurds (2025) looks at drone warfare, and The Island, her latest film, gets its first German showing. You sit down in a cinema for its 26 minutes, with stories tied together by floods.
This is mostly video, so budget time to watch rather than walk past. Tickets are €13, €8 reduced, and free for under-18s. On the first Thursday of the month the hall stays open until 21:00, free from 18:00.
Hito Steyerl builds whole rooms for her videos, and the hall holds about eight of them, made between 1999 and 2025, on algorithmic control, war and climate. Her film The Island is shown in Germany for the first time.
How Not To Be Seen
Look for Steyerl's 2013 tutorial video that humorously demonstrates ways to make yourself invisible to surveillance, shown in its own architectural set.
The Island
Her newest film, in its first German showing: a 26-minute cinema piece linked by recurring floods, surrounded by holograms, projection spheres and documentary videos.
Mechanical Kurds
A 2025 video installation about modern warfare fought with drones and artificial intelligence.
Under-18s get in free. Some of the newer work deals with war and drone warfare.