Medicine – Harry Styles

In her seminal 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 more topical than ever: 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 Luca Schelfhout pieces together a live performance of a Harry Styles song using fan-made recordings. There is no official, professional quality recording of this song because Styles never released it officially and only performs it live. In this case, the poor version is indeed the original, not the copy…