Dortmunder U | Power Plants

Featuring 180 works by nearly 50 artists, the exhibition “FLOWERS! Flowers in 20th- and 21st-Century Art” offers a comprehensive overview of the floral motif in art from the past and present centuries. The multichannel video environment “Power Plants” by Hito Steyerl from 2019, installed by 235 Media at the Dortmunder U, is an example of the media-artistic exploration of a theme that has inspired artists since the Baroque period.

The environment developed by Hito Steyerl consists of 18 LED video modules in various sizes ranging from 50 x 100 cm to 100 x 200 cm and 18 LED text modules arranged within three steel frameworks. Each monitor-text unit is a “Power Plant” video sculpture created by neural networks. Together, they form a virtual garden consisting of plants with ecological, medicinal, and political powers. Hito Steyerl draws a parallel here between the concept of ruderal vegetation (from the Latin rudus, “rubble”), which spontaneously establishes itself on fallow, devastated, overused, or vegetation-free soil, is linked here by Hito Steyerl to the automated systems of image reproduction and distribution—which she has frequently examined—and their effects on political systems.