Poor Images

POOR IMAGES

A poor image is an underrated image, and a counter-image needs an original image. A relationship. Something that is worth the friction. From the very first minute, GEGENkino has embodied our interest in rebellious, uncomfortable, non-conformist, experimental and sensual attempts to take a stand, to advance film as a language in motion, and to explore new experiences with spaces and light, sounds and music, materials and arrangements.

With this year’s thematic focus POOR IMAGES, we are offering a number of (extremely subjective) perspectives on artworks for which perfection is an abomination. We are turning our senses to these impure and flawed forms of imagery, which are, paradoxically, both marginalised and dominant. Our inspiration and source was Hito Steyerl’s essay “In Defence of the Poor Image”. In it, she pointedly describes, in just a few pages, the political, aesthetic, social, commercial and global conditions of poor images, which are reproduced, edited and exchanged, downloaded, ostracised and consumed permanently. Permanent consumption is all well and good, but when does a cluster of pixels actually become an image, or a mobile phone video a film? Where do the elitist logics of quality, canon and taste drive their nails into the flesh of unbridled, hierarchy-free creativity?

The popularisation of affordable VHS technology in the 1980s and the first, clunky mobile phone cameras were connected with waves of democratisation in filmmaking. New opportunities for participation and global networking suddenly opened up, and the divides between artistic vision, production, technical craftsmanship, marketing, presentation, archiving and curation seemed to have been bridged once and for all. Every now and then, one or another power dynamic was disrupted as well. Until the self-digesting killer capitalism had once again juddered most things out. So, finally, 8K. Pure. Visual. Perfection. Deep pore immaculacy. We’re in a pretty poor state. Let’s make the best of it!