We believe the Serpentine
is here for everyone.
We need to go with art, to the people. 
We wanted to have a way to bring those really
important embodied stories of inequality
into the centre,
into the heart of the exhibition itself.
Welcome to the future. 
Welcome to the future, Ben. 
We are here inside Hito Steyerl's exhibition,
Power Plants
and she has projected us into the future. 
The work that you do with the Serpentine
is quite far-reaching
and it's a wide web of different elements
that you’re putting together.
So, I think the reason
for that kind of far-reaching nature,
is that we've seen technology
have an increasing impact on our lives
and it's something
that affects all aspects of what we do.
 But when we started, particularly working with
Hans Ulrich about five years ago
when I joined the gallery,
we were focused on the question of
how artists can play a role
in shaping what that technology might do
or what it can be.
One of the interesting phenomena of,
say, social media
is the fact that many people 
won't differentiate
between what they see on Instagram
and what they see in a physical space. 
There's a kind of assumption
that we need to produce in a certain way
but the audience has got ahead
of where our history is
and it's kind of dissolved
into this strange current.
I think this is an interesting point,
but I’m going to play devil's advocate
with you
and assume that the institution is also the platform for these
technological innovations
which can be considered exciting. 
Everyone has seen beautiful images
on Instagram but at the same time,
don't you want to go there
and take your own picture?
And I think sometimes,
there is also this desire of being involved.
And I totally agree with that
and I think like that's also one of the
interesting effects of technology.
The kind of most significant augmentation
of a physical space
is actually to create moments
where people can take Instagram pictures.
Instafriendly.
Yeah, and so there is a great
necessity in this moment
to rethink what an art institution can do
and how it can play a role in shaping
what those technologies can become.
The technology becomes another protagonist
and all of these elements are brought together
to create these conversations
about what the possibilities of those are. 
Traditionally, we've treated the white cube
as the fixed boundary
and everything happens within it
but in the moment in which you have social
media
and you have this proliferation 
of all these kinds of platforms,
and different ways of disseminating the work,
you get this real dispersal of information
and then everything becomes immaterial
in the greater work.
I think the other thing that's going to be
interesting
is also the backlash against technology.
That increasingly, people don't want it
to be a part of their life
and in many ways,
an art gallery is a sacred space
and much of this could be seen to be profane. 
One of the interesting things
about using the Serpentine galleries
is the fact that it's always changing;
the space is always transforming.
You enter and rediscover
the space in that way
and one of the elements
that we also do within our programmes,
is taking us beyond the gallery space
and beyond these different spaces
and also engaging with the local communities. 
I guess that we exist in this moment
where everything is kind of networked.
And so increasingly, institutions become
more collaborative, more cooperative
and we now have entered into
this space of kind of extreme plurality
and it seems very much that this is the direction
of travel for institutions going into the future.
-Beautiful.
-Probably.
