In one frame, Steyerl is in Berlin, in front of the Brandenburg Gate; in another, she’s in Kurdistan, where her friend, PKK guerrilla Andrea Wolf, was killed in battle. Using her own iPhone, the author demonstrates the speculative nature of cinematographic concepts such as shot and counter-shot, insisting on the ambiguity of the English terminology, to create a parallel between aesthetic violence and the violence of war.

Hito Steyerl 
(Munich, 1966. Lives and works in Berlin) is a filmmaker, artist and writer. She has published many books, including The Green Room. Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art(Sternberg Press 2008). She teaches Experimental Film and Video at UdK Berlin and has held courses at the Dutch Art Institute, the Malmö Art Academy, Akademie der bildenden künste in Vienna, the Royal Art Academy of Copenhagen, and Goldsmiths College of London, among others.
She was Wim Wenders’ assistant on his films Till the End of the World and So Far, So Near.
Among her more recent one-woman shows: ICA, London; Van Abbenmuseum, Eindhoven; and the Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart (2014); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2013); e-flux New York; Wilfried Lentz in Rotterdam (2012). She has shown at Biennales in Venice, Istanbul (2013), Gwangju (2010), Shanghai (2008), Berlin (2004), and at documenta 12 KASSEL (2007), and Manifesta 5 (2005). Her films were presented at Festivals in Oberhausen and Rotterdam (2013), Copenhagen (2010), Loop (2010), as well as in major museums and art centers world-wide, including the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Stedelijk, Amsterdam; MCA, Chicago; HKW, Berlin; the Museum of Photograhy, Tokyo; MACBA, Barcelona; CCA, Glasgow, and the Tate Gallery, London.