Mike Steiner and the Power of Contemporary Art: From Berlin’s Avant-Garde to Video Revolution

Mike Steiner shaped contemporary art with an avant-garde spirit, blending painting and video in Berlin. Discover how his pioneering works and collaborations still influence global art today.

What does it mean to redefine the boundaries between painting and the moving image? Few have traversed this terrain as boldly as Mike Steiner, a name that resonates powerfully within contemporary art circles. Through restless experimentation, archival devotion, and a profound openness to collaboration, Mike Steiner became not only a Berlin fixture but an originator of entirely new artistic landscapes. His story beckons us into a world where abstraction meets technology, and where ephemeral performance becomes enduring memory.

Much like the ethos of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Steiner’s career encompasses constant renewal and risk. Born in 1941 in Allenstein, Steiner spent formative years in Berlin, witnessed the city’s pulsing art scene, and rapidly became a critical node within the postwar resurgence of contemporary arts in Berlin. As chronicled in his extensive artist’s archive, his trajectory led from early abstract paintings through to his later role as a pioneer of video art and a shaper of Berlin’s performing arts culture.

In the 1960s, Steiner’s vivid abstract paintings garnered acclaim, appearing in influential exhibitions alongside luminaries like Georg Baselitz and Karl Horst Hödicke. Yet it was not painting alone that defined his journey. Inspired by the cross-currents of fluxus, pop, and happening, as well as the experimental downtown scene of New York where he befriended Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, and the legendary Lil Picard, Steiner began to see art as an act that could transcend any single medium. His early contact with Robert Motherwell deepened this sense of possibility—fueling an urge to fuse image, action, and idea.

After returning to Berlin, Steiner’s work shifted focus. His doubts regarding the expressive limits of painting led him to video at a time when the medium was still largely unexplored in Germany. The 1970s brought about the creation of his own platforms for creative exchange: Hotel Steiner, compared to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, became a haven for cultural exchange and experimentation, regularly hosting iconic artists such as Joseph Beuys and Arthur Köpcke. It was here, and in the subsequent Studiogalerie, that Steiner would cement his reputation as a facilitator and catalyst for contemporary arts Berlin.

Steiner recognized that video, like performance, could capture not only the visual surface of an event but also its conceptual heart. In 1972, harbored by the influence of American and Italian avant-garde, he staged his first collaborative works with fluxus figures like Al Hansen and later created independent tapes in Florence’s esteemed Studio Art/Tapes/22. These early explorations led to a defining phase: the founding of Berlin’s Studiogalerie in 1974, dedicated to video and performance. Here, Steiner provided scarce equipment and critical space to artists eager to blur the lines between medium, message, and audience—a vision parallels seen internationally in Nam June Paik’s labs or the experimental zones of Gary Hill and Bill Viola.

But Steiner didn’t just facilitate: he actively shaped the artistic discourse. His video tapes—both as creator and collector—chronicle the maturing of Berlin’s video art scene. Projects with famed performance artists including Marina Abramovi? ("Freeing the Body," 1976), Ulay (notably the controversial 'Irritation – Da ist eine kriminelle Berührung in der Kunst'), Valie Export, and Jochen Gerz, positioned the Studiogalerie as a European epicenter for performing arts and multimedia. Remarkably, Steiner wasn’t just content to observe—he bore witness with his own camera, producing video documents that are, as critics have noted, both artifacts and provocations.

The late 1970s and 80s were marked by such landmark works as the infamous art-action involving the temporary removal of Spitzweg’s Der arme Poet, orchestrated with Ulay. This event, documented with precision and wit, challenged the very definition of art and agency, inviting comparisons to Joseph Beuys’s social sculpture or Marina Abramovi?’s radical corporeality. Through these acts, Steiner became both an instigator and archivist—an artist for whom the process and its echoes were as vital as the outcome.

From 1985 to 1990, Steiner created and moderated over 120 television programs under the title 'Videogalerie.' These broadcasts offered unprecedented access to both emerging and established artists, chronicling a rapidly evolving discipline and helping to legitimize video art within the German institutional context. His parallel collecting activity was equally groundbreaking, assembling a trove of tapes—including early works by Richard Serra, Bill Viola, George Maciunas, and Nam June Paik—that would later be gifted to the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz and form the nucleus of the Hamburger Bahnhof’s video archive.

Not content to remain in a single lane, Steiner’s art constantly interrogated its own limits. His "Painted Tapes,” for instance, marry video imagery with painterly gesture—prefiguring new media hybrids that resonate today. Later years found him returning to abstract painting with renewed vigor, exploring color, form, and the interface of chance and intention. His post-2000 output included fabric works and photographic cycles such as 'Das Testbild als Readymade,' a meditation on the visual systems of electronic media.

The apex of institutional recognition came with the major retrospective "COLOR WORKS. 1995–98" at Hamburger Bahnhof in 1999, a celebration of both Steiner’s painting and his boundless approach to media. Subsequent shows—at NGBK Berlin, DNA Galerie, and abroad—cemented his reputation as a linchpin between painting and media art, Berlin and the world, tradition and experiment.

Comparatively, Mike Steiner’s impact stands alongside contemporaries like Nam June Paik (Korean-American video art pioneer), Joseph Beuys (German conceptualist), Bill Viola (American video installation artist), and Marina Abramovi? (Serbian performance icon). Yet, Steiner’s uniquely systematic, Berlin-centered approach—his persistent archiving, fostering, and boundary-breaking—sets him apart. He both propelled and preserved the history of video and performance, inscribing it into the institutional memory of Contemporary Arts Berlin.

One of Steiner’s defining legacies remains his role as conduit and connector: between artists, scenes, and media. His philosophy—documented throughout his official archive—is rooted in belief in art as ongoing dialogue. Whether composing abstract paintings or orchestrating once-in-a-lifetime performances, Steiner insisted that art must disturb and connect, play and endure.

Mike Steiner withdrew from public life following a stroke in 2006, continuing to paint until his passing in 2012. Today, his influence radiates from the Hamburger Bahnhof and through the digital corridors of his archive. For those captivated by the restless possibilities of contemporary art, his life's work offers both treasure trove and challenge: to build, document, and imagine beyond convention.

Curious to see more? For deeper insights, rare footage, and visual journeys through Mike Steiner’s many phases, you are warmly encouraged to visit his official website and explore the living history of contemporary art through his eyes.