In her essay “In Defense of the Poor Image” Hito Steyerl sings the praises of low quality images. She discusses their (political and aesthetic) potential and lauds their reach. Although that text is now over a decade old, it is still very much up to date: visual phenomena such as memes, tiktok videos and cellphone footage have increased the reach and visibility of such “poor” imagery.

In this epigraphic video essay, film student Femke Wouters chose a politically charged topic, highlighting the potential of “poor images” to protest against the government. The video begins with “rich” images from a professional news broadcast, and that choice makes the contrast with the image quality of what follows immediately clear, if only because of the very different ways in which these two types of images handle on-screen text. In the news broadcast, the text is neatly designed, placed in clean boxes. In the “poor” TikTok posts the text is placed over the images in an amateurish and even angry way – an expression of the outrage that underlies those posts.

Wouters uses quite a few phrases from Steyerl and pairs them with images that are at times startlingly fitting. Even Steyerl’s quote about “intensity, fun and distraction” is illustrated with apt images that show that even on the margins of such a disaster, a certain lightness can be found.

The overall structure of the montage turns this video essay itself into a political message. It becomes a form of performative critique: the longer the video lasts, the more Wouters’ own anger and indignation seep in.