In her video installation Factory of the Sun, Hito Steyerl makes use of the emphatic notion of sunlight, that old symbol of progress, leading us in a dialectic fashion, which is both critical and playful, to the very heart of the debates about our digital present. Factory of the Sunslips into the form of a computer game, so as to draw on the narrative structure of popular entertainment and establish a more favorable position from which to wage battles against contemporary evils. For the struggle is about nothing less tan sounding out the remaining freedom of action that political individuals and subjects have in the face of the inextricable interlacing of digital streams of information, economic interests, and social and cultural distortions. Like the diverse modes of a computer game, the film switches between different levels of reality. The narrator is Yulia, who is also the programmer of the game. The game?s protagonists are initially introduced to us as slave laborers in a motion capture studio ? the technical dispositif that transforms the movements of a figure into light. In a frantic montage, the dance scenes act as the motor producing an incessant stream of changing images. At the same time, the act of dancing represents the most playful form of resistance for the young protagonists in their struggle against the supremacy of their invisible opponents.

Jasmina Metwaly and Philip Rizk?s video installation Out on the Street is a work of fiction. The strategy that the Cairo-based artist duo takes against neoliberal processes in Egypt is not a documentation of the state of things. Instead, they stage a form of radical theatre, an enactment, based on the experiences of the collective and the power of the imagination. On the rooftop terrace of an apartment block in central Cairo, the artists invited a group of workers, both employed and unemployed, to enact the privatization of a public factory, interspersed with experiences from the actors? own lives. They worked together to produce scenes that express the mechanisms of power in Egypt and the everyday humiliation experienced at the hands of superiors. The video weaves together fictional performances, personal testimonies, and mobile phone footage, linking these personal narratives to broader social struggles. While the video is the main feature of the installation, it includes additional documents retracing the different layers of this theatrical experiment: photographs and tiles from the now abandonned workshop setting on the rooftop are accompanied by the cellphone records of an old worker documenting the destruction his former factory.

Olaf Nicolai?s presentation retraces and concretizes the collected documents of his durational piece GIRO, performed on the rooftop of the German Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial. The starting point of his approach was an image research on the iconography of the rooftop ? understood as a dialectical space of freedom as well as threat. This comprehensive compilation of images includes contemporary media footage as well as historic images. His montage weaves together different themes of escape; as liberation, ascension, flight, secret garden, but also as retreat, defense, and punishment. The wall mural is framed by large projections of video footage recorded by flying boomerangs during his durational piece on the rooftop. Nicolai?s installation sums up the central motifs of this exhibition: the rooftop as a political sphere, and the global circulation of images, people, and things.
 

Tobias Zielony?s series The Citizen is concerned with the representation of refugees in European media as well as with exploring their selfperception. Although the migratory movements of our time are often reduced to the tragedies that occur at the external frontiers of the ?fortress Europe?, Zielony?s view is directed towards the self-portrayal of migrants, their personal stories, and their right to be taken seriously as political subjects in Germany. They protest against the restrictions placed on their freedom of movement, against the prohibition to work or to study. Zielony highlights this new self-confidence in his photographs, which he presents in showcases and large wall pieces reminiscent of the layout of the pages in a newspaper ? the only thing missing is the columns of text between the photographs. The empty spaces point towards the ruptures in the biographies of the individuals, along with all the details that are left out of public media debates. In return, Zielony has asked African authors and journalists to comment on his photographs. The results, in the form of newspaper articles, are on display in one large showcase. A third element of this installation is a pile of newspapers containing information provided by the people portrayed in Zielony?s photographs.

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Tobias Zielony studied Documentary Photography at the University of Wales and at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. The starting point for his work is the observation of a global youth culture. In recent years, his photographs and films have focused on marginalized groups in capitalist societies. They reflect on traditional photographic narrative styles and can be read as an alternative to conventional forms of documentary presentation. Zielony sees the camera as a stage for his protagonists.