Hito Steyerl: The Secret Museum

The Stedelijk Museum’s Public Program is very proud to present the lecture performance The Secret Museum, which deals with the relationship between politics, the mass production of art, and the funding that glues them together.

In May 2013, Hito Steyerl presented I Dreamed a Dream (Part 1) at the Stedelijk, as part of the museum’s renowned performance program. This performance lecture proposed that art production used to be one of the most arcane activities, reserved for male masters who were able to invest a lot of time and labor to develop their skills. Given such origins, Steyerl wondered how the creation of art became so thoroughly popularized. How is it possible that basically anyone can claim to produce art nowadays? Steyerl compared this development with another major technological and social transformation: the invention of firearms. Will mass art production change society in the same way?

Following this presentation, the Stedelijk commissioned Steyerl’s performance lecture as part of the 13^th Istanbul Biennial, which took I Dreamed a Dream (Part 1) as its main point of departure: Is the Museum a Battlefield? This lecture focused on the arms industry, an activity constantly re-conceptualized by the media. The lecture asked the question of how a museum and a battlefield could be related, while Steyerl followed the trace of an empty bullet casing she found near the mass grave of Andrea Wolf and her comrades in Van, Turkey.

Now Steyerl pursues the series with The Secret Museum.