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# Hito Steyerl Brings Us Late Night Public Access Weirdness
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/hito-steyerl-4-nights-at-the-museum/
- Published: 2020-11-24T19:36:14.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:42:34.000Z
- Description: 4 Nights at the Museum, a “weird-ass visual podcast,” is a good example of responsive curating amid the pandemic.
- Author: Rea McNamara
- Tags: Art, COVID-19, e-flux, Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators, Germany, Hito Steyerl, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 09:08 (2019, 2020, part 3)

As more North American museums close due to the latest surge of COVID-19 infections, responsive curatorial pivoting becomes the new contingency plan. Until there’s a vaccine, this bricks-and-mortar closing and re-opening cycle will be the norm. 

This is why it’s worth looking more closely at online projects like [*Hito Steyerl*](https://hyperallergic.com/tag/hito-steyerl/)*: 4 Nights at the Museum*. Presented by Düsseldorf’s [K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen](https://www.kunstsammlung.de/en/exhibitions?ref=hyperallergic.com#k21) and [e-flux Video & Film](https://www.e-flux.com/video/?ref=hyperallergic.com), the project was organized in response to K21’s own closure, impacting Steyerl’s exhibition, [*I Will Survive*](https://www.kunstsammlung.de/en/exhibitions/hito-steyerl-en?ref=hyperallergic.com). Utilizing a “weird-ass visual podcast” framing, *4 Night*s* at the Museum* brings late-night public access weirdness to an online museum public program. As both featuredartist and on-air host, Steyerl switches from conversations to presenting alternative versions of works from the show. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/11/4_nights_at_museum_screen_shot_01.jpg)

Screenshot documentation from "How to Plant Flowers in Prison?," the second episode of *4 Nights at the Museum* (courtesy author)

How is this different from any other Zoom talk? It’s all in the execution. In a recent episode, Steyerl interviews Hamburg-based actress and filmmaker Heja Netîrk; the pair discuss the Kurdish refugee’s nine-month-long wrongful political imprisonment in Turkey. As Netîrk recalls the plants prisoners grew, AR-generated plant foliage overlays Netîrk’s Zoom screen. Suddenly, this intimate interview podcast cross-mixes into ambient VJ set: this was Steyerl’s own take on the prison garden, imbued with properties like “poison\[ing\] autocrats" and "healing social media addictions.”

In a later screen-share of her machine learning software, Steyerl groused about how an hour of neural network rendering produces only 40 seconds of footage. “To generate \[the\] future, it’s ultra slow,” she quipped drily. Let’s hope other museums are quicker about adapting shuttered exhibitions.

*The last episode of* [Hito Steyerl: 4 Nights at the Museum | A weird-ass visual podcast](https://www.e-flux.com/video/361148/hito-steyerl-nbsp-4-nights-at-the-museum/?ref=hyperallergic.com) *streams online on November 26 at 2PM ET / 8PM CET via e-flux.*