Unwatchable

Julian Ross presents:
«grain» (2016) by belit sağ 

Volker Pantenburg presents:
«getty abortions» (2023) by Franzis Kabisch

Evelyn Kreutzer presents:
«512x512» (2024) by Arthur Chopin

“In what moments are we justified in covering our eyes?” The question the editors of the essay collection Unwatchable (Duke University Press, 2019) asked five years ago feels even more potent now. Human-to-human atrocities have a far longer history than the advent of videographic technology, but we’re in an era of unprecedented access to images of mass civilian murder that is shared globally onto our smartphone screens. Abject details that used to be obscured behind pixel blurs are now strikingly visible. The more we encounter these images, a realisation sinks in that there is more that wasn’t captured: these incidents too are “unwatchable” in another sense of the word. While watching the brutality of genocidal violence that does reach our screens has been hard to stomach, looking away doesn’t feel like an option. The decision not to share feels like we’re complying with its normalisation but to share also feel it might perpetuate trauma or further generate apathy. This moment we’re in forces us to reflect on our position as consumers, producers and distributors of images. 

With all this in mind, “unwatchable” as a concept seems ripe for re-evaluation and further consideration through videographic criticism. We brought together three works that respond to the questions that “unwatchable” brings forth. grain (2016) by belit sağ finds a visual representation of the ambivalence between wanting to look away but also needing to look directly in focusing on a pixelated blur. If she were to show the full screen, what we would see are mutilated bodies of political prisoners in Turkey from twenty years ago and her voiceover ruminates on her search for a visual language to discuss these images without participating in their violence. getty abortions (2023) by Franzis Kabisch, geo-blocked and therefore “unwatchable” for those outside of Switzerland, explores the reluctance of society to engage directly with abortion – choosing to keep the realities of its pain out of sight and preferring to evoke its experience – and contemplates the consequences of this eschewal. Arthur Chopin’s 512x512 (2024) unshackles AI generative imagery free to reveal the depths of depravity on the dark web. While the uncanny figures certainly produce discomfort, the real horror that lies within the image is that they originated in our reality and, while still legible as a technological concoction with our reality as its ingredients in the early days of AI video generating, we will soon encounter a time where reality and AI imagery will be indistinguishable (if we’re not there already). What will we find unwatchable then?

(Julian Ross)