Against Illustration

Abstract

Against Illustration advocates for a methodology of purposeful difficulty in video essaying, in search of new critical entrances into their objects of study. The field of videographic criticism encompasses a broad variety of formal approaches that often differ in their invocation of root objects. Where the dominant ideology of cinema has been perpetuated through common systems of visual codes, and tends to invite an evidentiary approach, videographic criticism has often sought, as a symptom and practice of empowered, post-modern cinephilia, to develop subjective and intimate transformations of objects. In this they enrich, celebrate, and just as often, trouble the themes, iconographies and histories of cinema. Against Illustration suggests for a reconciliation between the purposeful difficulty of experimental cinema and the promise of such an approach in videographic essaying. To do so, the author explores George Steiner’s typology of difficulty in poetry (and in particular its tactical and ontological manifestations), Steiner’s suggestions for creative reading/spectatorship, and his pursuit of a critical entrance into an art steeled against easy perception and ready interpretation.