Calling the didactic thing didactic doesn't make its didacticism any less abrasive or irritating, and this “didactic educational .mov” is hard in its petulance. Like watching a precocious child play Mozart on the piano, they've mastered it without loving it, dead in life. You feel like less than a zombie watching it. And it berates you for it Steyerl's hypertrophied ability to play the meta-game of art would be fun, if it wasn't so heavily trying to impress just how much fun. This film is the artworld's Garden State, quirky, lovable, pressing all the right buttons, string of pop notes. An aggregate of everything, aggravating the uncomfort of precocious youth.
Entirely meta-knowing: "Look how good I am at harnessing the tropes and meaningful methods of the art world. Watch me be good, but let me also let you know that I know I am good, and let me let you know that there is nothing here for you to know, and that I know there is nothing here for you you should be enjoying for let me let you know that I know that I know this is spectacle and that I am self-consciously self-aware of this fact and let me let you know this whole thing is a meta-game of triple-agenting of he knows that she knows that he knows she knows quagmire of Irony to nth degree that was already summated a decade ago in the Simpsons when a teen at a Smashing Pumpkins show (that's how old this is) is asked if he's being serious and he responds that he doesn't even know anymore, whether he's being serious, and that's the point we've reached, where it doesn’t even matter anymore. Whether we're serious or not or whether we mean it or not, it just does not matter."
