SocialSim

Overview

The German artist Hito Steyerl’s (1966-) “SocialSim” is a complex, seductive video installation that resembles a mixture of an interactive video game and a scene in a club. The work explores the social imbalance in the world – a reaction to the amount of information we live and work with from social media, digital networks, news etc. In the work, the demand for information appears in the form of a manic dance, in which uniformed avatars wriggle around as if controlled by an invisible force. The work recreates the medieval mass psychosis known as Saint Vitus’ dance, in which people danced themselves to death.