Translated material
(Against) progress
It seems clear that the public, in its search for visual pleasure, places considerable emphasis on image quality. And also on the quality of the video product, labeled as well done. An interesting feature is that earlier, maybe ten years ago, it seemed that the desire of the human eye for a picture with a higher resolution was due to a passion for reality, for verisimilitude, for the video image to be no different from how the world is seen by the eyes, that is, a certain movement similar to what was observed in painting - after it ceased to perform sacred functions and became a tool for recording reality. Today things are different. The illusion of achieving similarity between the video image and the gaze of the “naked” eye has been dispelled. The image has passed the point where, albeit conditionally, one could agree that it is similar to what we see with our own eyes, without an intermediary. Nowadays, the high-quality image rather represents a new kind of convention, which could be called the “image of the future.” And, in this case, the future should be understood precisely as what already exists. It would be quite appropriate to use the word progress here. Progress is a social dream, a kind of immanent god who guarantees that change inevitably brings “better” with it. A person who sees the improvement in the quality of the image and the improvement in the “madeness” of the work, based on his faith in progress, accepts it precisely as the upcoming “better” future, which already lies beyond the scope of what the eye sees. Today, only through a camera with a resolution of “4K” we can see “this way”, tomorrow our eyes will be replaced with lenses, and we will see a new world.
Where the desire for the best arises, morality also arises. Presumably, a movie made well done, that is, edited without “sharp” cuts not caused by the effect of the attraction and filmed on a high-quality camera, is an example of moral goodness, and goodness in the coming future. Other actions will be perceived as opposition on the path of society to the “better”. But, as we know, progress is not a phenomenon that takes place in art, even though cinema has a hereditary relationship to art rather than an essential one. To shoot today, eluding well done, means to be immoral. This means creating, defending positions that expose progress as an illusion, as something that is trying to curb the chaotic open world and smooth out the corners of its inconsistency.
Progress is associated with replacement, or, better said, with substitution. Substituting a dream for its realization, but with a slight echo of the fact that the realization itself is a little “not the same.” Take, for example, a person’s dream to fly, and what we have in fact. Substitution, as the essence of progress, turns out to be the central element of Werner Herzog’s film “OOO. Family fairy tale." Progress makes it possible to replace hotel employees with robots (whether these robots can dream is an important question Herzog sounds in the film), fish in an aquarium with robot fish, and unwanted or missing family members with actors. The problem of the shaky foundations of society is a deeply moral problem, consistently reflected by society, but most often this reflection is what smooths the corners, turning a statement whose content contains immoral material, that is, one that questions the “best” as good, into a moral statement in form. For example, you can remember the Spike Jonze film “Her”. A film touching on the problems of the relationship between man and technology, made technically impeccably, which nullifies the meaning of the problem itself. Herzog does things differently. He takes a high quality camera, but he undermines it with the camera work. Herzog's image moves away from the territory of the legitimate well-done image, and towards the perspective of the average person with a recording device, the point of view of someone who happily takes pictures of cherry blossoms with his phone and shows the photos to friends. This is a simple person, not a cinematographer, who for some reason strives for professional equipment that brings him a dream, an image of the future. But one should not think that Herzog himself is so naive, such is the subject of his film. The subject of the film is the recording.
The subject trembles, but trembles not like the hand of an innovator and experimenter like Grandrillier, but like the hand of a person shuddering from the image of the future, but this is not a trembling of fear. But the image of the future blinds us with progress and destroys human relationships through substitution.
Herzog peers through a high-quality camera into a high-quality world and trembles, denying the tendency of progress to turn an image into a well-done, well-cooked image. It turns out that Herzog is making a rather immoral statement. If we call moral that which believes in the best, and associates the best with quality. The idea of progress is undermined by the fact that we can use its achievements by deviating from their goals. So Herzog makes a statement against the blind development of technology, through the means of technology itself. And we are mistaken when we think that the purpose of improving image quality is to increase the enjoyment of family photos. Increasing quality means increasing totalitarian control.
What's interesting is that if Herzog had used a low-quality image, his gesture would probably not have been as accurate. It wouldn't have worked out at all. A low-quality image or film as a separate type of image, although they express immorality—film to a lesser extent—however, they are completely transferred by progress to the rank of a “fetish” or a toy. Yes, only today they are becoming image types in full force, but in order for their formation to really take place, we still have to free them from the fetish status imposed on them by progress.
It is precisely the fight against himself with weapons that distinguishes Herzog’s film from a series of anti-progressive films deliberately made in a “bad” or other quality.
It can be assumed that a possible effective means of real immoral utterance, that is, utterance on the territory of strong, active art, the art of escape, is an activity that, with the help of actual moral means, that is, a high-quality, professional video camera, questions the ideas of progress in its way of “madeness,” anti-productive and anti-utilitarian, and, of course, a subversive attitude to the content. Subversive - that is, libidinal. True to your desire.