The Poor Image

'The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.' 

Hito Steyerl's enquiry into the substandard dematerialized digital image questions notions of aura, authorship and authenticity in the age of file-sharing and digital distribution. The "films" in the Lost In Translation? playlist seek to put Steyerl's idea into perspective. Compressed, reproduced, ripped and remixed, one might argue that these works, medium-specific as they are (or, were), aren't the real thing. But perhaps the poor image is no longer about the real thing. Rather, it's about reality.

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Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_73mu7_XsX4CR2339I2lJVK9PiDK5aeR
Steyerl's essay: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/