Is a Museum a Factory?

Hito Steyerl “Is a Museum a Factory?” e-flux journal reader 2009, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009 pp 28-42

Hito Steyer is a writer, film maker and has a PhD in Philosophy. She has a Professorship at University of Arts, Berlin and has taught film and theory at Goldsmiths Colleg, Bard College and Centre for Curatorial Studies (amongst others). Her films and video installations have been shown at documenta 12 in Kassel, at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam, and at a solo shows at Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland

I think that Steyerl’s comparison of “spectator-as-labourer” (Steyerl)p39 and the labour of Fordist era factory workers very interesting. Does she suggest that a modern cinema experience requires little skill on the part of the viewer in a similar way that an unskilled factory worker carries out a simple task on a factory production line? Could she be comparing the time a cinema viewer spends watching with the time a factory worker spends labouring?

I think her comparison is suggesting that viewing is a form of labour - that a viewer has to work at the act of looking. This could not be more so today with the complexities of a complex mix of media, of imagery, of screens, screenings, all creating a multitude of independent viewers (p35). Let alone the politics of venue and privacy - what is considered as a public or private space – an art gallery, museum, blog, internet space?

I cannot help but think of her silent crowd “struggling between passivity and overstimulation” (p35) do we become passive in the face of overstimulation? Do we not need to think? Like the factory worker, faced with a repetitive all-day task, passively disengaging their mind as they clock-in, leaving their body to carry out the labour. Or do we need to engage fully? Is the potential of overstimulation in fact our gift to each other, reflecting the fantastically rich and diverse landscape of possibility everywhere we care to look? Then again the image of Charlie Chaplin engaging with the Bellow’s Feeding Machine is perhaps more engagement than we might wish to participate in. (Chaplin)

Bibliography

Modern Times. Dir. Charlie Chaplin. Perf. Charlie Chaplin. 1936.

Steyerl, Hito. “Is a Museum a Factory?” e-flux journal reader (2009): pp 28 - 42.