On Weirdness and Videographic Memory w/ Evelyn Kreutzer & Kevin B. Lee

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hello and welcome to the videoa podcast I'm your host will deg gravio today's episode is the second in an ongoing collaboration between the podcast and Kevin B Lee who in his role as the

locarno film festival Professor for the future of cinema at USI University of Lugano is leading a three-year research project on video essays with Johannes

boto and Evelyn kzer funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation on today's episode Kevin and Evelyn have a conversation about Evelyn's picks from this year's Sight and Sound poll of the

year's best video essays they use these videos to unpack some of her interests related to their project the video essay memory ecologies bodies for more information

please visit the video.com And subscribe to our free newsletter notes on videographic criticism at the video essay. substack

essay. substack [Music]

Evelyn Cher welcome to Lano hi Kevin thank you for having me it's it's really great to have you as the newest member of our research team here especially

with the um snsf uh research Grant video essay memories ecologies bodies so like to talk a bit about that and your role

in the project but um also want to talk about video essay specifically and and so uh the way I thought of doing that would be that we could look at a couple

of or a few of your selections from the recent s sound video essay poll maybe offer uh some viewing Wrecks for our audience so from the selection of video

essays that you um put in the Sight and Sound list is there one that you'd particularly like to recommend to our audience yes I would like to recommend a

video that in a way Falls outside of my usual area of video essay consumption this time I made an a special effort to go on YouTube and look for video essays

and video essayists that work more in a quote unquote popular realm and not so much in the academic realm that I'm more

familiar with and one of the videos I found most intriguing is a video essay called why do we make comedies about existential dread by the video essayist

afterthoughts her her name is Sam and she goes by afterthoughts I believe other people are involved in her account but she seems to be the main person

behind it I know that she has appeared on the BFI poll before I believe in 2022 that's probably how I found out about her in the first place because I

like to visit past polls uh once they've come out and and find out about new content as well and what I really like

about this video is that it compasses and a really impressive amount of cultural

content sources questions and finds a way to spin a really

historical um narrative from existential dread in the early 1900s uh and then even more so in response to World War II

to our our current moment and trying to find find out what the very specific dread and U over stimulation media over

stimulation is that we're experiencing right now that leads to a new surge in absurdist comedy yeah it was fascinating to watch

this video in terms of how it narrated or accounted for like um absurdist theater this a phenomen that happened

you know post World War II and using like meme language or kind of Internet standup comedy language as a way of describing it which to some extent I

found a little bit jarring but actually had me thinking about how historical events uh from the past get redescribed

rearticulated and re understood by new generations um and I I kind of relate that to one of your main focuses for the project which is memory like how how

does memory operate over time and what is the role in the media in both describing memory articulating it visualizing it but also transforming

it yeah I thought it was really interesting um I think it also given given the breath of what the video tries

to cover it also neglects a few reasons why perhaps we are seeing a lot of these um absurdist comedic shows and and films

now but I really like this um she starts out with this question of why are we why are we so weird right now why are we so obsessed with with this darkness and

this dread right now um and then Compares it to absurdist theater from the postwar era and uh in a way Compares it in this really intriguing through

this intriguing image of what people like Becket and UNESCO were doing when they were engaging in existential dread was they stared at a blank wall wall and they translated that

into absurdus theater what we're doing now is not we're not staring at a blank wall anymore we're staring at our phones we're staring at our devices we're staring at each other and each

other's we're doom scrolling with each other and besides each other and that kind of overstimulation of of images of

content that in a way negates any individual fragments or or piece P of information that's our blank wall of the

current moment and perhaps that's a little uh provocative or black and white and there's maybe lack some Nuance that you could bring up but I really like

this it I like this comparison and it breaks down a phenomenon that um I think we're all quite familiar with in a really interesting way and of course

that has a lot of implications to questions of memory she she mention she mentions everything everywhere all at once um at large and this all at Oneness

that we're experiencing in our current media consumption uh in our you in in the way that we use memes

as a language for example uh that all at Oneness has a huge impact about the way we might think about memory probably also on the way that just cognitively we

experience memory and we store memory and we exchange memory um and how we ex exchange and experience information uh and actually in a previous conversation

that you and I had you you use this really nice way of phrasing this of information having become the the protagonists uh in in the way that we

communicate and understand and experience content for like of a better word and that definitely that's also a way of breaking it down maybe in a very simple way but

that's something that we see reflected in the crazy weird absurdest comedy and um dark comedy that we experience and consume now H it's interesting thing

that you said about relating this kind of maximalist let's call it a doom scroll aesthetic of just like a constant feed of content and audiovisual

stimulation somehow being our equivalent of the blank wall that you know Becket would stare at like to think like the Doom scroll is is our blank wall because on this on the one hand it seems like so

opposite but on the other hand it might actually be leading to similar effects um and and to think that like yeah yesterday's minimalism is today's maximalism in terms of what it basically

amounts to because it makes me wonder about what you know what it means to what what does it really amount to to experience so much and to also be able to produce so much I found this video

essay rather virtuosic uh in in in terms of all the different videographic little ticks tips and techniques that it utilizes all the

sort of like YouTube gestures and you know jokia sides and visual puns I mean I I remember my first encounter of this type of aesthetic was some years ago

with uh the video essays of Grace Lee uh who I consider to be like you know a true like maximalist video essayist uh and this this one video essay uh called the speed and the

Stillness of being online somehow resonates with what we're talking about of like how all the speed that you experience online is amounts to a kind of Stillness but it also yeah I'm I'm

kind of left marveling at again this array of tools and kind of audiovisual linguistic techniques that are at the disposal of today's creators

and how how capable and how competent especially young creators are like genz or Millennials I I feel very old just kind of and exhausted and tired just

like watching what they're able to pack into any 5c span of their video essays and uh how much how much time it would take for me to learn those skills and

practice them compared to how natural I assume they're able to articulate those skills and so I'm wondering what you might think about that in terms of um seeing the skill sets of young creators

especially those that are on YouTube and Tik Tok and how do they relate to um videographic scholarship um yours or

those that you see others doing yeah I think I think it's really interesting what Sam does in this video uh given how especially compared

also to the other videos that I picked she definitely covers the the biggest topic and the largest historical frame uh there are other videos that I picked

that really focus in on very um specific details like a very different use of scale uh cultural and um uh Source

related scale and interestingly I I agree she she replicates a lot of she's very meta in her approach she replicates a lot of the

Aesthetics from the shows and um and films that she refers to including visual puns and uh in a way this this very disjunctive Rhythm

between explanatory um explanatory sections Where She lays out the history and then these inserted YouTube aesthetic uh kind of jokey

comments that she adds but in a way I think the perhaps the most important skill that all of us

regardless of the video essay Realms that we operate in uh given given the content that she that she's talking about is to be able to distill

tons of information that comes at us everything everywhere all at once at the same time at the same on the same scale

um to put order into that that flood of images and sounds to sort it into hierarchies of this is the

overarching uh narrative this is these are the details these are the examples this is the content that it floods into to unpack it and repack it obviously is one of the main things that

we all do as video essays but in this particular case where the whole video is about this loudness as she calls it this loudness of thoughts and information and

and I guess making remixing the different volumes and the different audio tracks of this metaphorical loudness that's one of the main tasks

that we all have and that's definitely something that she does really um really well when you talk about loudness and you talk about uh states of mind at least that's what I'm thinking about now and again given

memory is one of the the themes of the project and how memories are reflections of states of mind uh what states of mind can we attribute to the different video

essays that you've selected because I I feel like on the opposite end of the spectrum of um you know why do we make comedies about existential dread I look

at johanes botto's video practices of viewing description which I find to be so calm and so minimalist like it

doesn't have any um images that we would typically describe as images I mean we see a film script a film strip being

projected with um you know writing that has that becomes abstracted in the form of its projection and we're listening to

these fairly meditative contemplative um accounts of cinematic memory by uh different videographic Scholars um and I find this very

effective and and um remarkable in terms of how few U elements are necessary to create a real

sense of contemplation and appreciation of the Cinematic experience so I don't know when you put these two video essays side by side what what comes to your mind as comparisons well I hadn't

thought about it about Johannes is video that way before but now I'm thinking if we stick if the with this image of the blank wall what he's doing here and of course

he's he's I'm sure he took inspiration from uh video pieces like Zen for film by namjun P uh and um and a few others

he is creating a blank wall so of course it's not completely blank it is abstracted colors and writing but it is

a reduced strip of film and a reduced imagery uh that highlights the it's a it's very much an audio piece right so it highlights the audio track and it

provides a blank wall for us to stare at to and to fill with what we're hearing and what we're thinking um and perhaps

that there's a way to read this as a generational difference in how we might approach it or um or really a different way of

approaching the uh the relationship between sound and image in this case I actually referred to Johan's

video as an anti- video essay for for that reason because it it it takes away the The Familiar imagery that we might

expect here it I mean it it really draws on our imagination to fill the blank page so to so to speak but perhaps it is actually

a an even more not conservative but more traditional approach to video essay making I hadn't thought about it that way before well when you when you say what is you know a conservative or

traditional approach but on the hand it's a videoa without images I don't know how conservative or traditional you know that that would be when I think of what's conservative or

traditional uh I think of the classic analytical mode where it's it entails a kind of close reading

of a of a scene or of audio visual footage and so I think of two examples from your selections um creative geography

Creative Connections by John KBS and extra local U by Jacob Smith and yeah it's interesting to think of these both as instances of I mean

they are made by film Scholars professors in institutions uh who were practicing film studies and a a close reading based typee of film studies

before they even started doing videographic um work um but at the same time I I think of them as really

upholding a certain relationship to images that again I find to be um on the opposite end of the spectrum as uh why do we make comedies about existential

gred because that video essay probably has more images than your other six video combined but I don't know if there's

ever a moment where it's analyzing or commenting directly on an image that is being presented and there are different reasons for that I mean I think that's

just become the norm with YouTube video essays because because of the way the algorithm Works you're not allowed to um let a scene play out for an extended

duration that would then allow you to comment analytically on that foot footage so um these two video essays they work outside of YouTube and for

that reason they're allowed to really um immerse themselves in a in a analytical mode studying the footage that they're

presenting so then it's Al and getting back to this question of memory and mind like what kind of memory and what kind of mind do these video essays produce

maybe Also to clarify what I meant by a more conservative or traditional approach that one might see in johann's work and I also don't want to offend him by calling him a conservative video

essayist by any means uh but his his video is in part very directly obviously engaged with the question of analog and

digital in the just in the Aesthetics that he that he uses with the film strip the stripped down film strip but also with um his engagement with people's

memories of earlier film experiences and that's a different type of approach to memory or Reawakening of a memory than what I see in the um in

the afterthoughts video which first of all is not concerned with analog or digital questions at all I don't think

and not so much with the history of visual references or V visual referentiality in the specific pieces that she that she t talks about but more

so with imbuing this this loudness that she replicates with an historical trace and

actually I I I agree that it is it's a much more explanatory video in many ways and it doesn't alter or manipulate the the footage that it uses in the way that

um a lot of the other video essays that I that I picked or a lot of the video essay that that we usually talk about and that we make does I mean there there seems to be a difference between quote

unquote YouTube popular video essay making and quote unquote scholarly video as I'm making this concern for altering the image or letting images play out um

but there's an interesting dichotomy here between what is what can we what can we call explanatory or um

traditional and what can we call experimental and um um image manipulation it's interesting what you just said

about um what this afterthoughts video essay might really be doing it's not so much analyzing these movies but more

conveying an overall well to use the cliche term Vibe of of what it is to watch these films within the context of

living today um so to me that that makes me wonder yeah are video essays sometimes meant to just transfer

a VI the vibe that one gets from watching the films that they're being talked about or what or what is at stake in the act of transferring uh that video essay's

perform like so you know I think about um Raisin in the Sun the the moving poems video essay that you highlighted

um and how that itself is a video essay about transference like how a written play gets transferred into a performance

and then how that performance gets transferred into a film and then how that film gets transferred into a video essay um based on a poem that I think

somehow that inspired the play yeah right yeah that it's it's a very beautiful piece and so you have that as an example and then hello dankness which is really a

surprising and delightful selection because I saw that at the Berlin Alla um in the in the cinema and it was just kind of a strange experience to be in

this this big screening room watching um you know footage from different movies from the 80s and 90s remixed in such a way as to tell the story of the Trump

Administration and that was that was a very strange feeling of transference of like um yeah and not just Trump the Trump presidency but uh the Trump presidency as understood through

different memes that circulated during his presidency so it's like memes as a way of telling history and mediating you

know current events but then memes getting transferred to 1980s and 1990s Hollywood movies uh so that they like memes were being turned into movies or

movies turned into memes whatever it's just it's just transferring layers of transference happening all around with this film yeah it's really interesting to to think about hello dankness and the

afterthoughts video essay side by side because in some ways I think they're fairly close to each other within my selection in terms of the flood of

images that they that they provide as you said um the afterthoughts video shows you a ton a ton of footage uh in a ton of different sources and so does

hello dankness I I mean I I didn't count how many films they're they're um using and and remixing and also both of them

appeal to this this memeified way of remembering through audiovisual media and remembering them and both of them

are also concerned with imbu their their media objects with a sense of

History only that afterthoughts or Sam goes by or or afterthoughts is trying to create an historical narrative and backing for why we're so obsessed with a

certain type of absurdist Comedy right now and henness really creates an an an artificial or an an anachronistic

history of the media that they're that they're using where they're openly being manipulated and really skillfully so I would say uh and fit

into a way in a way fit into or or in a way the history is taking out of these these sources that come from very different times in in American cinematic

history and they're all put into a very relative or a relatively Short history of the present or of the last few years so that's a they're both dealing with

memory and history and creating new pneumonic narratives but they're doing they're going in opposite directions with with how they how they're going

about it um and at the same time they're also Polar Opposites in the way that they're being received these videos that's that's that's partly why I pick

them uh I find it quite fascinating that hello dankness is in a way as this reminds me of guia video art from the 60s and 70s and that it really lives on

the basis of word of mouth and events in-person events it only shows at festivals it's not available online it's not available for purchase I don't think because of the the copyright issues

involved and just the the vast amount of sources that they're using as far as I know they're traveling with the film um probably still I'm not sure or maybe

they've just uh taken a break after doing it for a year so it's really it's almost like a con that's on on tour on a on a global tour whereas the

afterthoughts video is a YouTube Fairly classical YouTube popular video that is openly uh available and accessible um so that's it's really

interesting how we might think of either of those as archival practices and um archival

revitalizations where they're both I mean I I conserve USA istic practice as an archival practice anyway and curating uh any amount of media sources

into a conversation a videographic conversation is an archival um undertaking but they in po they go in

Polar Opposites in terms of how that archive is being made accessible or not okay so this question of audience accessibility distribution it kind of leads us to the

fin final video essay that was on your list how to make money from video essays by Will web which I watched with a great sense of appreciation like watching this

video you can really just tell how much um experience how much thought will has put into his creative practice as a

YouTube video essayist how he studied the field and I have to say I I I felt

um a lot of nostalgia Vibes for how I started with YouTube back in 2006 2007 it was just really a completely different ecosystem than what it is

today because I didn't put nearly as much thought in what I was doing as he has um I was just grateful to have a platform where I could you know nerd out

on movies um analyze whatever came to my mind when I was watching a film experiment with different modes of montage and you know arranging footage

in a Time online export that and upload it for whoever was possibly interested in seeing seeing what I had to share doing it no still haven't reached that

part yet but um yeah it was just you know it was it was a very kind of edenic uh rather naive period and watching

Will's video I was very impressed but I also kind of wondered like if if I were coming up today would I even bother because it just feels like so so much

work but my question for you is you know as as a videographic scholar primarily situated in Academia what is it like for you to watch this video and to see um

someone else's circumstances in pursuing video essays and videographic scholarship in some ways what you just laid out the the the transition that that you've experienced and seen uh sort

of parallels what uh what we were talking about earlier right with and what afterthoughts is going going for this Inc just incredibly vast mass and

uh increasing mass of content that's out there and that that has fed into video essay production as well there's just I mean even I who has been part of this

community for a much shorter amount of time than you have constantly find myself torn between being really excited about how much this feeli is growing and at the same time really overwhelmed and

stressed out by the amount of stuff that's out there and the amount of videos that I want to see I feel obliged to see and I and then in the end I'm I I find myself on my phone Doom scrolling

as well and like turning that into uh the blank space that I'm looking at um so I think that's it's really it's very much part of of of what you're

describing um I found it important to to include this video which of course is not it's not a video essay in and of itself um but I find it important to add

it to the larger conversation um because I I'm very aware that you and I are both in the privileged position

that we're being institutionally funded and supported to do the work that we do I so far have never had to seriously worry

about whether or not I would have the money to make my video essays because I have made them out of the comfort of an academic position and I'm very aware

that that's not true of most of the YouTube video essayists and a lot of the film critics that produce content in this in this format um this is really a

scholarly privilege for the most part and um since the the BFI poll is also I think a really good platform to bring

those different Realms of of video essay production together uh I find it important to to highlight that uh I think as Scholars we sometimes when we're just talking with each other we

forget that there's a real um there's a real Financial issue involved uh not just in terms of securing copyright for

anything but for making Revenue with it making we we might look at the number of our views with uh existential dread because not enough people are watching

our content but other people look at these numbers as indicative of whether they'll get to make another video essay or not right yeah it kind of takes us back to the started this conversation

because you were encouraging our listeners to have an expansive curious um and diverse diet of video essays but

of course that's easier send than done you know partly because you know how do you know about video essays that you don't know about that aren't you know

already inside your like bubble or your immediate interests and then um given what we were what we've been saying about the afterthoughts video ESS say

how do you you know protect yourself against this very real anxiety of uh having too many things to watch always feeling like you have to catch up and

feeling you know overwhelmed with what's out there so for this year what's your uh if not a resolution what's your what's your strategy for how you're going to approach your video essay

viewing uh habits I I haven't figured out a perfect solution for this yet at all uh I'm I'm really if if I'm asking people to uh to go

after a diverse diet of video essays it's really above all it's an instruction to myself uh and I take the the BFI poll as as an invitation to do

exactly that my Approach in the last few years has been to go back to the poll look through it look for video essayists for video essay platforms and

publication venues that I'm not a familiar with yet check them out follow them and gradually by doing so expanding

my my bubble and that has worked out fairly well for myself but I'm not nearly uh at the point where I feel confident in saying I have a good sense

of all the different uh modes of production that are out there there's also of course um very practical things like language uh that limit um the

content that you might might be exposed to um but I think it's the so far that it's the the best way that I found to to do that and in the end I I also think of

course like any historical art historical movement has had that community and bubbly this this bubble aspect to it we

it's it's not something that is inherently negative or that we need to fight I think it's human nature it's human nature you you will be more inclined to consume things that are that

were made by your friends than strangers but but you can expand your friend Circle you expand your social media

bubble uh bit by bit um and expand your uh your exposure in in this manner and and of course it's a it's a it's a network Community issue as well because

I know that you and any any of my other friends and colleagues in video essay world are also doing exactly that gradually expanding what they're exposed to and then they might share it and then

it becomes a it can have this um this larger uh effect but uh but in the end I'm I'm really curious to see where the

the larger infrastructure of video essay production will go and if perhaps we will see in video essay uh production the same trends that we're seeing in

mainstream media production where now the all the different niches of production that that we've seen grow out of the streaming age Etc that I think very much influences what afterthoughts

is talking about as well now seems to where see we seem to go back to um a a more hierarchical more less

maximalist uh approach to Media production where um production companies and networks are joined and perhaps in a few years we'll actually go back to a three Network er something not sure wow

the three networks of video essays so maybe we'll go there I don't know well I kind of have that formulation in my mind you know because my um my side of this

project is ecologies of the video essay and I have this general you know easy to reference uh set of parameters like

three dimensions of video essays the academic YouTube and popular and um cinematic and visual art so but I don't

know you know of course these are very porous um uh spheres and very much an evolution but uh and who knows if a a

fourth one might uh come to replace them or or or I mean complement them or if uh you know they might merge who knows I mean it's interesting that you related

to uh what's going on with the the streaming Wars and like broadcasting uh companies and movie studios I just think history works that way it it's it's

cyclical in that way but also we're I know you had talked about this in the previous uh podcast conversation um we're seeing a lot of videos being taken

down from Vimeo for copyright issues that had been there for a long time so now I hear more and more video scholarly video um makers talk about uploading their content on YouTube instead of

Vimeo and we always had this weird uh dichotomy between the YouTube world and the Vimeo world so that seems to be colliding perhaps that's where we're going that now soon sooner or later

it'll just be YouTube or personal conferences in person events it really makes your headspin to think that YouTube is now more amenable or hospitable than Vimeo but hey just the

start of strange plot twists to expect for this year so um yeah and we we'll have to organize some watch parties here just to kind of keep each other apprised in what what's coming our way but I'm

looking forward to that sure and thank you very much for these recommendations I hope uh our listeners check out these video essays you can find them listed in the Sight and Sound poll under Evelyn's

name but I think we'll also post some links in the podcast page as well so thanks Evelyn and looking forward to

seeing more with you this year

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