In October 2024, the MIT List Visual Arts Center (in collaboration with Buffalo AKG Art Museum) will open the first retrospective in over a decade devoted to Steina's work. List Center curatorial assistant Zach Ngin will share some reflections on the process of organizing the exhibition, with particular attention to how Steina's works and methods register in the present. The presentation will conclude with some reflections on the contemporary political resonance of imaging tools and machine vision.

​​Steina’s nearly five decades of video work ­queries the possibilities of sound-image exchange, machine vision, and electronic abstraction. She has persistently sought to generate images that exceed the human eye and decenter human subjectivity. Venturing in nature and combining imaging technologies with reflective orbs, she creates work that reorients viewers in relation to both natural and electronic space. The title Playback alludes to the capacities of video as a medium, as well as the way her videos and installations emerge from the endless process of playing with and manipulating signals rather than a results-oriented commitment to image or narrative.

Zach Ngin is an art worker and writer based in Providence, Rhode Island. They are currently the curatorial assistant at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge.