The art of Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl’s video essay “Hito Steyerl_How Not To Be Seen_ A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File” masquerades as a training video, complete with a classical robotic narration and five absurd lessons on vanishing. The video itself included political jokes about the disappearance of people that were enemies of the state, and sexist jokes such as “women above the age of 50 being invisible” to make the video entertaining whilst reflecting social issues. Beneath Steyerl’s humor lies a Marxist-feminist critique of how images govern bodies and power. The 16 minute work fuses archival footage from satellite images, green screen animations produced by her crew, and U.S. Air Force resolution targets to interrogate the topic of ‘visibility’ in the modern age of informational technology, where drone technology and data capitalism are becoming more and more advanced.

Steyerl’s intention of making this video is to expose visibility as a weapon. The opening shot lingers on a Californian desert grid used to calibrate spy satellites, and from there, the lessons escalate: “Become invisible by becoming a picture,” “Hide in plain sight,” or “Disappear by becoming smaller than a pixel”. These make fun of self-help culture while revealing stark inequalities in modern day society. Steyerl also notes that 70% of the global population lives beyond a 1-foot satellite resolution, which means that they are technically “unseen”, yet tracked by metadata online. Immigrants, activists, and the poor are rendered hypervisible for targeting, while corporations vanish into offshore shells. She clearly showed the message of invisibility not being absence but a luxury good.

Satire is Steyerl’s sharpest tool. The title’s “.MOV” suffix intentionally fails to hide the digital nature of the video file, mocking didactic authority. She used invisibility tricks such as figures or people reappearing in pixelated smears to underscore futility under total surveillance. Yet the final lesson imagines an off-grid community living inside a resolution target, a utopian glitch in the system. This societal alienation refuses passive consumption, forcing viewers to confront their complicity in browsing the internet, and being tracked in real life by their own government.

Steyerl does not prescribe escape but equips us to see how seeing works. In an era of AI deepfakes and facial recognition, “How Not to Be Seen” remains prescient, and the message behind grows even stronger. It transforms invisibility from defeat into a critical strategy that everyone should utilize, urging viewers to sabotage the gaze rather than to court it.