Hito Steyerl - Defense of the Poor Image

Hito Steyerl - In Defense of the Poor Image

The poor image is a visual communication once held privately and pristinely in the cinema has now become public, distorted, compressed, uncertain (quality becomes accesibility)

It contains both the promise of digital technology and the failings

The content of poor images is secondary to the message they convey, where they imply how the image has been consumed and re-gurgitated

Within the image, a class system hierarchy exists – where the sharpest, highest resolution and image purity are seen as primary. The hegemony of 35mm film dominates as the supreme format.

The commodification of culture insisted visual media become a highly specialised field monopolised to private distribution networks where it could be controlled by financial means, experimental images became super obscure and fringe, until the advent of internet culture where the radical forms of the image became 'poor' and highly distributed.

Poor images exist outside the class structure, their resemblance implies their status. As former states dissolve, so do the apparatus of state cinema. Conversely neo-liberal states enforce the distribution of the historical cinema in a highly monetized manner.

Imperfect cinema breaks down the labour conditions in a class society, contrasting perfect cinema which is always reactionary. Juan Garcia Espinosa

The economy of poor images has no implied agenda, it can be used by both progressive and reactionary forces. The distribution networks of the poor image travel upon are frontiers of both hyper-privatisation and commodification from national and commercial interests, but also enables participation from all strata of society. This new paradigm blurs the boundaries of the creation process, where the user can fill all the roles of media consumption and production.

As inherent to the machinations of the vast user base, the poor image represents all aspects of the populace (competition, arrogance, self-obsession, submission, etc...) The degradation of the image implies the recursive process of multiple user-producers.

The value of an image can be changed from resolution to velocity. While the poor image operates against the bias of high resolution, it functions perfectly for high commodification and consumption for a public weaned on high frequency low immersion imagery.

Distribution networks of poor images create a subversive climate for their dispersal apart from private/national industry, therein changing the political economy of the image itself. Static "original" vs. fluctuating copy. A common language for planetary audiences can be found in the visual poverty.

Poor image is the new vehicle for activism, (not really well defended opinion of the piece)

The preeminence of the poor image today is representative of the state of reality today - anxious, low-attention span, temporary, itinerant – a duality ( like steve rushton's facebook observation -- at the same time mining data for corporations as expressing creativity and free will. )