This video essay, structured as a practical guide on becoming invisible in visual datafication, introduces multiple ways a subject can be transformed into something no longer represented by the image generated. Deconstructing seemingly simple images into what they potentially could be, Steyerl makes the mind of the audience moving: How do digital pictures even come into being and how many approaches are there to a single image? How do the individual elements relate to one another? Where does the “real” recording end and later added elements start? In some ways looping the same kind of imagery, this film adds more and more meaning to what appears to already have been shown.
How Not To Be Seen - A Fucking Didactic Educational Mov. File (2013), stills