Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun, 2015. Single-channel high definition video, environment, luminescent LED grid, beach chairs, 23 minutes. Installation view from the Venice Biennale, German Pavilion, 2015. Image courtesy of the Artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Photography by Manuel Reinartz.
In this collaboration with City Lights Theater’s The Next Stage, explore two new artistic events coming up in San José: the play Coded and the landmark video installation Factory of the Sun. Join playwright/director Kirsten Brandt and assistant curator Kathryn Wade for a fascinating discussion about video games, surveillance, corporate culture, and our increasingly virtual world.
Registration is through City Lights Theater Company's ticketing page. Details on how to join on Zoom will be provided in an email from City Lights Theater Company.
About
Kirsten Brandt, an interdisciplinary artist and educator, wrote and directed Coded, which had to close right before opening night in March 2020. The cast and artistic team are now back to inaugurate City Lights’ reopening season this September. This innovative play follows a team of female video-game creators working to revolutionize virtual-reality gaming—even as they must battle the industry’s boys’ club. When the virtual world begins to invade the real one, things get more surreal than they could have imagined.
Kathryn Wade is the curator behind Factory of the Sun by the acclaimed German artist Hito Steyerl. Interweaving genres of video games, internet dance videos, news reportage, and documentary film, the installation tells the surreal story of workers whose forced moves in a motion capture studio are turned into artificial sunlight. As human viewers watch the video from the vantage of reclined beach chairs, the work probes the pleasures and perils of digital image circulation, while exploring possibilities for collective resistance in a time when surveillance has become routine.
Factory of the Sun will open at SJMA on August 6, 2021, and is a joint acquisition with the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and SJMA.
City Lights Theater Company
Since 1982, City Lights Theater Company has been inspiring and challenging audiences with a host of plays and musicals, many of them fresh new works. The company’s downtown San José theater is a bustling space that attracts artists, educators, students, and playgoers alike.