Hito Steyerl lives and works as filmmaker, journalist and author in Berlin. From 1987-1990 she studied cinema and documentary film in Tokyo with Imamura Shohei and Hara Kazuo. In 1990 / 91 she worked as assistant director, production and technical coordinator for Wim Wenders, for Bis ans Ende der Welt (Until the End of the World). Between 1992-98 Steyerl studied at the University for Film and Television Munich (HFF).
Since 1998 Hito Steyerl has participated with her documentaries at different international filmfestivals, art exhibitions and international symposiums on new media, information technology and cultural theory which deals with questions of migration, interculturalism and globalisation. In Summer 2000, Steyerl was also a participant of the Internationale Frauenuniversität (ifu) / International Women's University in Hannover, Germany. Her work has been featured at big exhibitions such as the 3. berlin biennial for contemporary art (2004), Manifesta 5 (2004), documenta 12 (2007), or the Shanghai Biennial (2008).
Using a sharply honed (visual) language to effect her discourse analysis slightly rephrased, Steyerl penetrates the masscultural aesthetic to reflect upon social change. She uses what could be called a “theoretical practice,” a “discursive action” that leaves behind the separation of theory and practice to attain a complex analytical view of the world that encompasses visuality and language in equal measure. In this approach, theoretical thought does not freeze up in reflection; instead, film-making renders it productive as a creative act of mediation between the theoretical and practical realms.