Mute magazine PRINT / ONLINE / SUBSCRIBE | Plane Destructive: the Recent Films of Hito Steyerl
http://www.metamute.org/en/articles/plane_destructive_the_recent_films_of_hito_steyerl
The popularity of the documentary form, in video, film and photography, has been widely debated in the realm of art over the last decade. Within the field of contemporary art, as a branch of the capitalist culture industry, the framing and production of subjects through the documentary form has come to carry an often dubious function. The figures of documentarism thereby produced offer a purely visual ‘engagement’, providing spectators with images that ’should be seen’, and repeating art’s traditionally affirmative social function by replacing a political act with its visual representation.
