Low-resolution poor images can subvert spectacle hierarchies by forging shared affect

Evidence

The cloud, however, can also provide space for alternative, shade-loving imaginations to grow. As artist Hito Steyerl (2009) has powerfully argued (writing a few years before the explosion of platforms like TikTok and Instagram), new digital media have made possible a rapid emergence of what she calls “poor images”: imperfect, out-of-focus, low-resolution images that “mock the promises of digital technology” (1) while still circulating within its chaotic premises. Poor images challenge the established visual hierarchies of modern spectacle society (which rewards high-resolution and focused images), and in so doing connect audiences in new visual bonds—“almost in a physical sense by mutual excitement, affective attunement, and anxiety” (7). They encompass “confusion and stupefaction” but also “disruptive movements of thought and affect” (8). They draft users into new roles of active participants in the collective production and circulation of those images. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 198

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Steyerl’s concept of ‘poor images’ as a working tool for how degraded media can resist spectacle.
• XREF: Connects to Steyerl’s essay ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’ and to Debord’s spectacle thesis being revised for a digital era. — connects to: Mulvey theorized three layered voyeuristic gazes subjugating women in cinema — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 317; Fan reconstruction of camgirl events depends on viewers’ arbitrary screen grabs — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 327; Incorporation into spectacle blunts difference and leaves only regulated visibility — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 277 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Mulvey theorized three layered voyeuristic gazes subjugating women in cinema — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 317; Fan reconstruction of camgirl events depends on viewers’ arbitrary screen grabs — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 327; Incorporation into spectacle blunts difference and leaves only regulated visibility — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 277 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Incorporation into spectacle blunts difference and leaves only regulated visibility #complicates (0.82) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 277