In Defense of the Poor Image

Hito Steyerl

The poor image is a copy in motion. Its Poor images are the contemporary quality is bad, its resolution substandard. Wretched of the Screen, the debris of As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost audiovisual production, the trash that wash- of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an es up on the digital economies’ shores. errant idea, an itinerant image distributed They testify to the violent dislocation, trans- for free, squeezed through slow digital ferrals, and displacement of images – their connections, compressed, reproduced, acceleration and circulation within the ripped, remixed, as well as copied and vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism. pasted into other channels of distribution. Poor images are dragged around the globe as commodities or their effigies, as gifts The poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or or as bounty. They spread pleasure or death a JPEG, a lumpen proletarian in the class threats, conspiracy theories or bootlegs, society of appearances, ranked and valued resistance or stultification. Poor images according to its resolution. The poor image show the rare, the obvious, and the unbe- has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, lievable – that is, if we can still manage reformatted, and re-edited. It transforms to decipher it. quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, into clips, contempla- tion into distraction. The image is liberated 1 from the vaults of cinemas and archives and Low Resolutions thrust into digital uncertainty, at the ex- pense of its own substance. The poor image In one of Woody Allen’s films the main tends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea character is out of focus.1 It’s not a techni- in its very becoming. cal problem but some sort of disease that has befallen him: his image is consistently The poor image is an illicit fifth-generation blurred. Since Allen’s character is an actor, bastard of an original image. Its genealogy this becomes a major problem: he is unable is dubious. Its filenames are deliberately to find work. His lack of definition turns into misspelled. It often defies patrimony, na- a material problem. Focus is identified as tional , or indeed copyright. It is a class position, a position of ease and privi- passed on as a lure, a decoy, an index, or lege, while being out of focus lowers one’s as a reminder of its former visual self. It value as an image. mocks the promises of digital technology. Not only is it often degraded to the point of The contemporary hierarchy of images, being just a hurried blur, one even doubts however, is not only based on sharpness, whether it could be called an image at all. but also and primarily on resolution. Just Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place. 1 Woody Allen (dir.), Deconstructing Harry. 1997

1 / 9 Shoveling pirated DVDs in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China, April 20, 2008.

look at any electronics store and this sys- anchored in systems of national culture, tem, described by Harun Farocki in a no- capitalist studio production, the cult of table 2007 interview, becomes immediately mostly male genius, and the original ver- apparent.2 In the class society of images, sion, and thus are often conservative in their cinema takes on the role of a flagship store. very structure. Resolution was fetishized In flagship stores high-end products are as if its lack amounted to castration of the marketed in an upscale environment. More author. The cult of gauge dominated affordable derivatives of the same images even independent film production. The rich circulate as DVDs, on broadcast television image established its own set of hierarchies, or online, as poor images. with new technologies offering more and more possibilities to creatively degrade it. Obviously, a high-resolution image looks more brilliant and impressive, more mimetic and magic, more scary and seductive than a 2 poor one. It is more rich, so to speak. Now, Resurrection (as Poor Images) even consumer formats are increasingly adapting to the tastes of cineastes and But insisting on rich images also had more esthetes, who insisted on 35mm film as a serious consequences. A speaker at a guarantee of pristine visuality. The insis- recent conference on the film-essay refused tence upon analog film as the sole medium to show clips from a piece by Humphrey of visual importance resounded throughout Jennings because no proper film projection discourses on cinema, almost regardless was available. Although there was at the of their ideological inflection. It never mat- speaker’s disposal a perfectly standard DVD tered that these high-end economies of player and video projector, the audience was film production were (and still are) firmly left to imagine what those images might have looked like. In this case the invisibility 2 “Wer Gemälde wirklich sehen will, geht ja schließlich of the image was more or less voluntary Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, auch ins Museum,” and based on aesthetic premises. But it June 14, 2007. Conversation between Harun Farocki and Alexander Horwath. has a much more general equivalent

2 / 9 Nine 35mm film frames from Stan Brakhage’s Existence is Song, 1987.

based on the consequences of neoliberal connected to the restructuring of global policies. Twenty or even thirty years ago, media industries and the establishment the neoliberal restructuring of media of monopolies over the audiovisual in cer- production began slowly obscuring non- tain countries or territories. In this way, commercial imagery, to the point where resistant or non-conformist visual matter experimental and essayistic cinema became disappeared from the surface into an under- almost invisible. As it became prohibitively ground of alternative archives and collec- expensive to keep these works circulat- tions, kept alive only by a network of ing in cinemas, so were they also deemed committed organizations and individuals, too marginal to be broadcast on television. who would circulate bootlegged VHS copies Thus they slowly disappeared not just from amongst themselves. Sources for these cinemas, but from the public sphere as were extremely rare – tapes moved from well. Video essays and experimental films hand to hand, depending on word of mouth, remained for the most part unseen save for within circles of friends and colleagues. some rare screenings in metropolitan film With the possibility to stream video online, museums or film clubs, projected in their this condition started to dramatically original resolution before disappearing change. An increasing number of rare again into the darkness of the archive. materials reappeared on publicly accessible platforms, some of them carefully curated This development was of course connected (Ubuweb) and some just a pile of stuff to the neoliberal radicalization of the (YouTube). concept of culture as commodity, to the commercialization of cinema, its dispersion At present, there are at least twenty tor- into multiplexes, and the marginalization rents of Chris Marker’s film-essays available of independent filmmaking. It was also online. If you want a retrospective, you can

3 / 9 have it. But the economy of poor images also has to do with the post-socialist and is about more than just downloads: you postcolonial restructuring of nation states, can keep the files, watch them again, their , and their archives. While even re-edit or improve them if you think some nation states are dismantled or fall it necessary. And the results circulate. apart, new cultures and traditions are Blurred AVI files of half-forgotten master- invented and new histories created. pieces are exchanged on semi-secret P2P This obviously also affects film archives platforms. Clandestine cell-phone videos – in many cases, a whole heritage of film smuggled out of museums are broadcast prints is left without its supporting frame- on YouTube. DVDs of artists’ viewing copies work of national culture. As I once observed are bartered.3 Many works of avant-garde, in the case of a film museum in Sarajevo, essayistic, and non-commercial cinema the national archive can find its next life have been resurrected as poor images. in the form of a video-rental store.6 Pirate Whether they like it or not. copies seep out of such archives through disorganized privatization. On the other hand, even the British Library sells off its 3 contents online at astronomical prices. Privatization and Piracy As Kodwo Eshun has noted, poor images That rare prints of militant, experimental, circulate partly in the void left by state-cine- and classical works of cinema as well as ma organizations who find it too difficult video reappear as poor images is signifi- to operate as a 16 / 35mm archive or to cant on another level. Their situation reveals maintain any kind of distribution infrastruc- much more than the content or appearance ture in the contemporary era.7 From this of the images themselves: it also reveals perspective, the poor image reveals the the conditions of their marginalization, the decline and degradation of the film-essay, constellation of social forces leading to their or indeed any experimental and non-com- online circulation as poor images.4 Poor mercial cinema, which in many places images are poor because they are not as- was made possible because the produc- signed any value within the class society tion of culture was considered a task of of images – their status as illicit or degraded the state. Privatization of media production grants them exemption from its criteria. gradually grew more important than state Their lack of resolution attests to their controlled/sponsored media production. appropriation and displacement.5 But, on the other hand, the rampant priva- tization of intellectual content, along with Obviously, this condition is not only con- online marketing and commodification, nected to the neoliberal restructuring of also enable piracy and appropriation; it gives media production and digital technology; it rise to the circulation of poor images.

3 Sven Lütticken’s excellent text “Viewing Copies: On the Mobility of Moving Images,” in e-flux journal, no. 8 (May 2009), drew my attention to this aspect of poor images. 4 Thanks to Kodwo Eshun for pointing this out 5 Of course in some cases images with low resolution also appear in mainstream media environments (mainly news), where they are associated with urgency, immediacy, and 6 Hito Steyerl, “Politics of the Archive: Translations in catastrophe – and are extremely valuable. See Hito Steyerl, Film,” Transversal (March 2008) “Documentary Uncertainty,” A Prior 15 (2007). 7 From correspondence with the author via e-mail

4 / 9 4 imperfect cinema diminishes the distinc- Imperfect Cinema tions between author and audience and merges life and art. Most of all, its visuality The emergence of poor images reminds is resolutely compromised: blurred, ama- one of a classic Third Cinema manifesto, teurish, and full of artifacts. For an Imperfect Cinema, by Juan García Espinosa, written in Cuba in the late 1960s.8 In some way, the economy of poor images Espinosa argues for an imperfect cinema corresponds to the description of imperfect because, in his words, “perfect cinema – cinema, while the description of perfect technically and artistically masterful – is cinema represents rather the concept of almost always reactionary cinema.” The cinema as a flagship store. But the real imperfect cinema is one that strives to and contemporary imperfect cinema is overcome the divisions of labor within class also much more ambivalent and affective society. It merges art with life and science, than Espinosa had anticipated. On the blurring the distinction between consumer one hand, the economy of poor images, and producer, audience and author. It insists with its immediate possibility of worldwide upon its own imperfection, is popular but distribution and its ethics of remix and not consumerist, committed without be- appropriation, enables the participation coming bureaucratic. of a much larger group of producers than ever before. But this does not mean that In his manifesto, Espinosa also reflects these opportunities are only used for on the promises of new media. He clearly progressive ends. Hate speech, spam, predicts that the development of video and other rubbish make their way through technology will jeopardize the elitist position digital connections as well. Digital commu- of traditional filmmakers and enable some nication has also become one of the most sort of mass film production: an art of the contested markets – a zone that has long people. Like the economy of poor images, been subjected to an ongoing original accumulation and to massive (and, to a certain extent, successful) attempts 8 Julio García Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema,” trans. Julianne Burton, Jump Cut, no. 20 (1979): 24–26. at privatization.

5 / 9 Chris Marker’s virtual home on Second Life, May 29, 2009.

The networks in which poor images circu- of countless transfers and reformattings, late thus constitute both a platform for a but also of the countless people who cared fragile new common interest and a battle- enough about them to convert them over ground for commercial and national agen- and over again, to add subtitles, re-edit, das. They contain experimental and artistic or upload them. material, but also incredible amounts of porn and paranoia. While the territory In this light, perhaps one has to redefine of poor images allows access to excluded the value of the image, or, more precisely, imagery, it is also permeated by the most to create a new perspective for it. Apart advanced commodification techniques. from resolution and exchange value, one While it enables the users’ active partici- might imagine another form of value de- pation in the creation and distribution of fined by velocity, intensity, and spread. content, it also drafts them into production. Poor images are poor because they are Users become the editors, critics, transla- heavily compressed and travel quickly. tors, and (co-)authors of poor images. They lose matter and gain speed. But they also express a condition of dematerializa- Poor images are thus popular images – tion, shared not only with the legacy of images that can be made and seen by conceptual art but above all with contem- the many. They express all the contradic- porary modes of semiotic production.10 tions of the contemporary crowd: its op- Capital’s semiotic turn, as described by portunism, narcissism, desire for autonomy Felix Guattari,11 plays in favor of the and creation, its inability to focus or make creation and dissemination of compressed up its mind, its constant readiness for trans- and flexible data packages that can be gression and simultaneous submission.9 integrated into ever-newer combinations Altogether, poor images present a snapshot and sequences.12 of the affective condition of the crowd, its neurosis, paranoia, and fear, as well as 10 See Alex Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics its craving for intensity, fun, and distraction. of Publicity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). The condition of the images speaks not only 11 See Félix Guattari, “Capital as the Integral of Power Formations,” in Soft Subversions (New York: Semiotext(e), 1996), 202. 12 All these developments are discussed in detail 9 See Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an in an excellent text by Simon Sheikh, “Objects of Study Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life (Cambridge, MA: or Commodification of Knowledge? Remarks on Artistic MIT Press, 2004). Research,” Art & Research 2, no. 2 (Spring 2009)

6 / 9 This flattening-out of visual content – the The poor image thus constructs anonymous concept-in-becoming of the images – posi- global networks just as it creates a shared tions them within a general informational history. It builds alliances as it travels, turn, within economies of knowledge that provokes translation or mistranslation, and tear images and their captions out of con- creates new publics and debates. By losing text into the swirl of permanent capitalist its visual substance it recovers some deterritorialization.13 The history of con- of its political punch and creates a new aura ceptual art describes this dematerialization around it. This aura is no longer based of the art object first as a resistant move on the permanence of the “original,” but against the fetish value of visibility. Then, on the transience of the copy. It is no longer however, the dematerialized art object turns anchored within a classical public sphere out to be perfectly adapted to the semioti- mediated and supported by the frame of cization of capital, and thus to the concep- the nation state or corporation, but floats tual turn of capitalism.14 In a way, the poor on the surface of temporary and dubious image is subject to a similar tension. On data pools.15 By drifting away from the the one hand, it operates against the fetish vaults of cinema, it is propelled onto new value of high resolution. On the other hand, and ephemeral screens stitched together this is precisely why it also ends up being by the desires of dispersed spectators. perfectly integrated into an information capitalism thriving on compressed attention The circulation of poor images thus creates spans, on impression rather than immer- “visual bonds,” as Dziga Vertov once called sion, on intensity rather than contempla- them.16 This “visual bond” was, according tion, on previews rather than screenings. to Vertov, supposed to link the workers of the world with each other.17 He imag- ined a sort of communist, visual, Adamic 5 language that could not only inform or Comrade, what is your visual bond today? entertain, but also organize its viewers. In a sense, his dream has come true, if mostly But, simultaneously, a paradoxical reversal under the rule of a global information cap- happens. The circulation of poor images italism whose audiences are linked almost creates a circuit, which fulfills the original in a physical sense by mutual excitement, ambitions of militant and (some) essayistic affective attunement, and anxiety. and experimental cinema – to create an alternative economy of images, an imper- But there is also the circulation and produc- fect cinema existing inside as well as be- tion of poor images based on cell phone yond and under commercial media streams. cameras, home computers, and unconven- In the age of file-sharing, even marginalized tional forms of distribution. Its optical content circulates again and reconnects connections – collective editing, file sharing, dispersed worldwide audiences.

15 The Pirate Bay even seems to have tried acquiring the extraterritorial oil platform of Sealand in order to install its servers there. See Jan Libbenga, “The Pirate Bay plans 13 See also Allan Sekula, “Reading an Archive: Photo- to buy Sealand,” The Register, January 12, 2007 graphy between Labour and Capital,” in Visual Culture: 16 Dziga Vertov, “Kinopravda and Radiopravda,” The Reader, ed. Stuart Hall and Jessica Evans (/ in Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. New York: Routledge 1999), 181–192. Annette Michelson (Berkeley: University of California 14 See Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Press, 1995), 52. Publicity. 17 Vertov, “Kinopravda and Radiopravda,” 52

7 / 9 Thomas Ruff, jpeg rl104, 2007.

or grassroots distribution circuits – reveal Imagine somebody from the past with erratic and coincidental links between a beret asking you, “Comrade, what is producers everywhere, which simultane- your visual bond today?” ously constitute dispersed audiences. You might answer: it is this link to the The circulation of poor images feeds into present. both capitalist media assembly lines and alternative audiovisual economies. In addi- tion to a lot of confusion and stupefaction, it 6 also possibly creates disruptive movements Now! of thought and affect. The circulation of poor images thus initiates another chapter The poor image embodies the afterlife in the historical genealogy of nonconformist of many former masterpieces of cinema information circuits: Vertov’s “visual bonds,” and video art. It has been expelled from the internationalist workers pedagogies that the sheltered paradise that cinema seems Peter Weiss described in The Aesthetics of to have once been.18 After being kicked Resistance, the circuits of Third Cinema and out of the protected and often protectionist Tricontinentalism, of non-aligned filmmaking arena of national culture, discarded from and thinking. The poor image – ambivalent commercial circulation, these works have as its status may be – thus takes its place in become travelers in a digital no-man’s land, the genealogy of carbon-copied pamphlets, constantly shifting their resolution and cine-train agit-prop films, underground format, speed and media, sometimes even video magazines and other nonconformist losing names and credits along the way. materials, which aesthetically often used poor materials. Moreover, it reactualizes many of the historical ideas associated with these circuits, among others Vertov’s idea of 18 At least from the perspective of nostalgic the visual bond. delusion.

8 / 9 Now many of these works are back – as poor images, I admit. One could of course argue that this is not the real thing, but then—please, anybody—show me this real thing.

The poor image is no longer about the real thing – the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation.

In short: it is about reality.

This text first appeared in e-flux journal #10, 2009 Published by e-flux Artists Space Artists Texts and Essay s

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