Hito Steyerl
Hito Steyerl was born in 1966 in Munich, Germany, and lives in Berlin. A filmmaker and writer, her prolific work operates between art, philosophy, and politics, addressing global capitalism and cultural imaginaries. She has had solo exhibitions at the Singapore Art Museum (2024), the Portland Art Museum (2023), the Kunsthaus Graz (2022), MMCA Seoul (2022), the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2022), Centre Pompidou Paris (2021), the Park Avenue Armory New York (2019), the Kunstmuseum Basel (2018), ICA Boston (2017), and MOCA Los Angeles (2016). Group exhibitions include the Venice Biennale (2007, 2015, 2019, 2024), documenta 12 (2007), and Manifesta 5 (2004). Her writings are collected in The Wretched of the Screen (2012) and Duty Free Art (2017).
THE LEAK
THE LEAK, 2024
5-channel video, sound, environment installation with pipeline structure
21:14 min
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul
Director: Hito Steyerl
Research: Philipp Goll
Idea and visual research: Oleksiy Radynski
Post-production: Christoph Manz
Installation: Manuel Reinartz
Production: Luba Knorozok for Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig
In this work, Hito Steyerl (b. 1966, Munich) exposes how gas flows, propaganda, and conspiracy theories intertwine. Central is the history of the Nord Stream pipeline and its predecessors. The video narrative also explores how the so-called “cultural pipeline” between Soviet Russia and (West) Germany has been a crucial part of the promotion of fossil fuel infrastructure.
The Leak unveils the connection between the dominant culture, colonialism, and environmental destruction in the Russian-occupied territories of the native peoples of Siberia.
Hito Steyerl participated in the Kyiv Biennial 2025 – Near East Far West (03.10.25–08.01.26) at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
The installation of Hito Steyerl’s work THE LEAK was jointly produced by KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, and Deichtorhallen Hamburg.
Trassniki
Hito Steyerl & Philipp Goll
2026
Single channel video in installation display
21 min
Courtesy the artists
This video installation consists of interviews with pipeline workers from the former GDR, also known as “Trassniki”. It was initiated during the initial exhibition of The Leak at the MdbK in Leipzig in 2024, through an exchange with visitors who had worked on the pipeline networks and associated infrastructures in Soviet Ukraine and Russia from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Around 20,000 people worked on two “Central Youth Projects”: the first from 1976 to 1979, on “Druzhba”, a pipeline that expanded across several sections of Soviet Ukraine, and the second from 1982 to 1993, on the “Gas Pipeline”, which ran through several sections of Soviet Russia.
Through research and interviews, it became clear that the Trassniki were not only involved in building and welding the pipelines. Their work extended to include other trades, constructing gas compressor stations, housing, roads, schools, kindergartens, hospitals, supermarkets, and more.
The interviews provide a vivid picture of conditions on site: the close social relationships formed far from home, the contradictions experienced within the officially proclaimed friendship between socialist states, and the disappointed hopes for socialist progress. They also reveal the hierarchies and power imbalances between East and West Germany, from which the latter benefited through the exploitation of East German labor under extremely harsh conditions and significant health risks.
Interview partners: Wolfgang Dube, Armin Meikstat, Norbert Pfau, Klaus Peter Treutel
Videos: Frank „Hofi“ Hofmeister, Steffen Roller
Photos: Wolfgang Dube, Norbert Pfau
Thanks for advice and connection: Olaf Münchow