The reader TEXT\WERK gathers scholarly contributions on the artistic and academic-essayistic works of the renowned media artist, director, and author Hito Steyerl (*1966). How does Steyerl’s writing inscribe itself into her films and videos? How do these in turn feed back into her texts and exhibition practices? Interdisciplinarily conceived between media, theater, and cultural studies as well as art history, this anthology provides the first analysis of this central aspect of Steyerl’s work and includes an interview with the artist. It also includes the current conditions of art reception in pandemic times. This publication was prompted by a digital workshop held in November 2020 in cooperation between the DFG Research Training Group "The Documentary: Excess and Privation" at the Universities of Bochum and Düsseldorf with the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.

HITO STEYERL (*1966) is one of the most important contemporary artists. Her work reflects on the social role of art and museums, forms of presentation in the media, and critically examines the use of artificial intelligence. In 2020/21, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, together with the Centre Pompidou, Paris, showed her first retrospective.