Liquidity, Inc is a wave of kungfu, investment banking, and revolutionary movements like the Weather Underground. But like much of Hito Steyerl’s work, this seemingly random collection of concepts and events has a deep structure.
Liquidity, Inc., 2014, HD video with sound, 30 mins, Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps, New York
The video installation consists of a large projection and a blue-lit environment. Viewers sit on plus-size comfy cushions on a plywood quarter-pipe. The structure, which seems to reference a skate park, also functionally nods toward Katushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave. This interest in liquidity in all its forms is summarized by one of the refrains in the video: a sample of Bruce Lee confidently coaxing a talk show host: ““Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
The main movement of Liquidity, Inc follows the story of Jacob Wood. Laid off from Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis, he returned to his true passion, Mixed Martial Arts, as a commentator. His experience links finance bros and sports fighting in a web of money, adrenaline and masculinity.
It’s good fun, until it’s not.
Liquidity, Inc., 2014, HD video with sound, 30 mins, Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps, New York
Liquidity, Inc., 2014, HD video with sound, 30 mins, Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps, New York
The range of visual devices should be familiar to fans of Steyerl’s work. Taped conversations, drop-shadowed text, archival footage, green screen projections and screen captures merge in a relentless stream of digital imagery.
The multiple definitions of “liquidity”—as an ethics, a physics—are explained through this diverse vocabulary. There are voiceovers on the 2008 subprime crisis, screen captures of a clunky 3D model of a wave, and ski-masked children standing in front of bogus weather charts. As if to ground this probing critique of capitalism on a personal ground, Steyerl’s emails about trying to scrounge together the money to make the video make it into the video.
It takes you to unexpected places. For example, In Free Fall follows a Boeing 707’s life. It started as a Trans World Airline passenger plane, before being sold to the Israeli air force; it was eventually retired and sold to a Hollywood studio and blown up as a giant prop. Some of the scrap aluminum was sold to Chinese DVD factories which might then just story Hollywood films, as if to prove Steyerl’s central point: reality really is just images.
Since the 1990s, Hito Steyerl has used her documentary training to expand the genre of essay films that Chris Marker pioneered and Harun Farocki pushed further. It makes for evocative, informative viewing. “Now, more than ever, real life is much stranger than any fiction one could imagine. So somehow the forms of reporting have to become crazier and stranger, too.” The scenes in Liquidity, Inc, range from interviews to charts to 3D models, but they have one concern in common: how do you make predictions in a complex world?
“All that is solid melts into air,” Marx’s description of capitalism, haunts this story. As finance escapes from the control of even the most sophisticated models, Jacob Wood shows that we have to shift from prediction to reaction: to being “like water.”
As the weather reports in Liquidity, Inc put it: “the weather tomorrow is exactly how you feel.” So are the markets. And the war, too. What’s confusing is that even though we’re moving faster than ever, we can barely stay afloat.
Liquidity, Inc, was recently included in Steyerl’s quasi-retrospective in Artist’s Space in New York, and is on view until —— in Bank MAB Society in Shanghai. (Chinese version only: Her writings can be read in translation here (link to the Hunting’s translations of Hito’s writing))
Liquidity, Inc., 2014, HD video with sound, 30 mins, Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps, New York
[1] It’s a genre that defies definition, but usually uses personal reflections to blend fiction and non-fiction.
[2] “Techniques of the Observer: Hito Steyerl and Laura Poitras in Conversation.” ArtForum, May 2015, Volume 53, Issue 09.
[3] See Collapse 8: Casino Royale, for a packed critique of the image of the future as a game of dice. http://www.urbanomic.com/pub_collapse8.php