Co-commissioned by 180 Studios, this is the Future is a video installation, conceived for the 58th Venice Biennale. The film’s narrative follows a woman, who sets out to find a garden that she had to hide in the future in order to protect it.

The installation also includes Power Plants: a multi- channel installation—initially conceived for Steyerl’s 2019 project at the Serpentine Galleries. The work features digital flowers generated by neural networks: computer systems modelled on the human brain and nervous system, which are programmed to predict the future by calculating the next frame in the video.

The artist has used this Artificial Intelligence to create a series of ‘predicted’ plants that are located precisely 0,04 seconds in the future. The installation is inspired by the idea of a ruderal garden: an ensemble of plants that grow out of waste ground, perhaps in the wake of human disruption or destruction.