Red Alert

In contrast to November and Lovely Andrea, Steyerl’s Red Alert (2007) is relatively non-narrative: three aluminum Apple monitors display pure red, evoking post-9/11 terror warnings and the ambient normalization of crisis. Inspired by Pure Colours: Red, Yellow and Blue (1921), a trio of solid color paintings by the Soviet Constructivist artist Alexander Rodchenko, Red Alert is a video work that acts more like a painting. Steyerl has described it as an expression of the entropic liquidation of video, just as Rodchenko and his contemporaries, nearly a century ago, explained Pure Colours in terms of the ‘end of painting.’

Alec Mapes-Frances, The College Hill Independent, 18 September 2015 · read the full text

STEYERL’S RED ALERT, 2007, would seem to bring representation’s demise to its logical conclusion. Shown recently at Documenta 12 along with Lovely Andrea, the work is composed of three computer screens, each displaying the same red monochrome image. According to the artist, the piece defines the “outer limit” of documentary video, where representation meets abstraction, the image reduced to an elementary and static color. The red images mimic the color used by the US Department of Homeland Security to warn that a terrorist attack is imminent. Multiplied to three, the screens indicate both the global proliferation of this warning system and its approach toward being the norm rather than the exception in everyday life.

T. J. Demos, Artforum, 2008-06 · read the full text

L’histoire de l’art, comme le monde de l’art, est souvent convoquée dans ce travail qui prend aussi la forme d’une critique des institutions. Power Plants (2019) suggère par exemple de « mettre fin aux franchises de musées dans les dictatures ». Comme dans Red Alert (2007), on peut également voir dans cette installation « un hommage au constructivisme russe, ce moment très bref où l’État avait confié aux artistes la mission de changer le monde », relève Marcella Lista.

trans.Art history, like the art world, is often summoned in this work, which also takes the form of a critique of institutions. Power Plants (2019) proposes, for example, to “put an end to museum franchises in dictatorships”. As in Red Alert (2007), one can also see in this installation “a homage to Russian Constructivism, that very brief moment when the state had entrusted artists with the mission of changing the world”, notes Marcella Lista.

Anne-Cécile Sanchez, Le Journal des Arts, 20 June 2021 · in fr · read the full text