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Hito Steyerl, “The Uncertainty of Documentarism” Reading Notes 

• • rough-cut and increasingly abstract documentary images evoke a situation of permanent exception and constant crisis, a state of heightened tension and vigilance. The closer to reality we get, the less focused and jumpier the image becomes. Let us call this the uncertainty principle of modern documentarism.
  • they bear witness to a stage of visuality increasingly defined by images where one can see less and less.
• “Unbroken belief” of the documentary form
  • I think when Steyerl said “unbroken belief” of the documentary form, he refers to documentary’s nature of authenticity. Just as the name of “documentary” implied, documentary should have used techniques to record the truth. And through live broadcast and filming, it was believed that documentary really reflects the truth.
• Truth & fiction
  • I believe any human-involved production is a mixture of truth and fiction. In this sense, truth provides original resources for fiction, and fiction reflects the manipulated truth. And by integrating truth with fiction, subjective thoughts and ideas can be conveyed through digital production, as well as the arts effect can be amplified as well.
• Authenticity and representation of the truth in the media
  • The significance of authenticity and representation of the truth in today’s media lies in the widely spread of online information. For many media users who may not be able to distinguish between truth and fake news, it could be of much harm if authenticity and representation of the truth was stigmatized in the media.
• Role of live broadcast
  • The role of live broadcast should have been a representation of authenticity, since live broadcast allows fewer human manipulations. And yet along with the developing technology and our evolving appetite for manipulating the truth and the audience, live broadcast today is no more the byword for truth.

Jorgen Leth & Lars von Trier, Five Obstructions (2004) Viewing Notes

• Precise rules
  • obstruction #1
    • no single edit may be longer than 12 12 frames
    • answer all the questions in the narrations
    • shot in Cuba
    • no set
  • obstruction #2
    • a miserable place
    • don’t show it
    • Jorgen Leth is the man
    • with the presence of the meal
  • obstruction #3
    • complete freedom or back to Bombay
  • obstruction #4
    • it has to be cartoon
  • obstruction #5
    • Lars Von Trier will make the last obstruction
    • Jorgen Leth will be credited as director
    • Jorgen Leth will read a text written by Lars Von Trier
• How Jorgen cope
  • obstruction #1
    • use close-up shots & slow motion, shoot static images,repeat
    • repeat the metaphorical answers
    • find local actors
    • use local scenes
  • obstruction #2
    • go to the red light district in Bombay
    • use a frosted screen to blur the face of refugees 
    • try to be the actor
  • obstruction #3
    • framing waiting and observing
  • obstruction #4
    • collaborate with famous cartoon maker
  • obstruction #5
    • read it out
• The effect on the movies
  • just like Lars said in the script he gave to Leth, the obstructions, “they are limitations or self-flagellation”.
• Other thoughts
  • One thing I enjoyed most while viewing the Five Obstructions is how the concept of “the perfect human” has promoted, extended and reshaped through the reproducing process. It really expresses the possibility and flexibility of arts.
  • it’s amazing to see how Leth successfully turns all the obstructions into inspirations. As he said in the film. he is used to waiting and observing before getting started, and I think that’s a good advice for content makers: just center around your idea and develop your thoughts!

• Ritchin: “fluidity of the digital”

  • I think that when Ritchin said “fluidity of the digital”, he refers to digital media’s nature of easy manipulation. The advent of digital technologies has largely increase our accessibilities to various materials and the convenience of re-organizing the digital content, such that we can easily re-shape any digital product basing on the original outcomes. Another aspect of the “fluidity of the digital” is the evolving of digital media, either in size, content and with time. Digital media permits keeping the contents in memory, which allows further manipulation and explanation on the content, and that makes the digital more “fluid”. In Ritchin’s case of O.J. Simpson, you can see how human manipulation has guided the directivity of digital image, and how its social impact has lasted to suggest its fluidity. Other examples can be find everywhere in today’s social media—how a post of a celebrity can be distorted and misused in the way that deviate the original meaning when the digital content was first produced.

• Photography’s capability of capturing reality

  • The unique capability of photography to capture reality lies in the human culture of vision. Seeing takes up so big a part among all our ways to sensing the world that it becomes one of the very primary way for human to collect informations from the surrounding. And among all other arts and technologies, photography is the closest way to human vision that contains plenty of informations in the frame: images, lights, time and etc. All other text-based media or technology such as text and books has fallen short on their directness and efficiency of carrying multiple informations. And yet photography also has its limitations—it’s static and plain in 2d, and it can only capture a fragment of time or space. But the limitations actually allows more space of imagination, or even manipulation, that, while keeping photography’s capability of capturing reality, they also allows more editing and shaping upon the reality—comparing to videos and virtual reality.