莱昂纳多的潜水艇

In 1515, Leonardo Da Vinci designed a weapon that would allow Venice to defend itself from the attacks of the Ottoman Empire: a proto-submarine that could sink enemy ships. In Hito Steyerl's immersive installation, we embark on a metaphorical journey aboard Leonardo's Vessel. Venice's waters, palazzi and skies, generated by future prediction artificial intelligence (AI) video processing, flow past while a silky voice-over speaks of technology, power, corruption, art and warfare. The voice-over addresses the recent name change of Finmeccanica, an Italian global company specialising in armaments, to Leonardo S.p.A., after the artist and weapon inventor. This manoeuvre is common in Steyerl's work: ripping apart the boundaries between reality and fiction, art and politics, philosophy and daily news through pointed, through nonchalant, rhetorical operations.